asian food: Taste for fine food By LOH FOON FONG Jess Ong Fact file Name: Jess Ong Age: 47 Profession: Head chef Hometown: Batu Pahat, Johor Education: Batu Pahat High School, Johor, William Amglis Commercial Cookery Schools, Victoria, Australia, Ryde Technical and Hospitality College, Sydney and Australian Institute of Management, Sydney Current base: Sydney, Australia Years abroad: 26 WHILE studying for the Diploma of Management at the Australian Institute of Management in Sydney in 1980, Jess Ong worked as a kitchen hand in a small French restaurant in Victoria to pay his rent. From his teen years, he knew that trade was what he was good at and he wanted to be a hotel manager. However, working in the French restaurant changed his mind about his career direction. At the restaurant, he helped prepare ingredients and simple dishes such as salads, soups and boiled vegetables as well as cook meals for staff members. Since he was not allowed to touch a lot of things in the kitchen because he was not a qualified chef, he experimented at home – making mayonnaise, roast chicken, roast potato and cream caramel for himself and his housemates. Ong, who loves to eat, soon fell in love with cooking. “It was then that I decided to be a chef,” says Ong who took a course in commercial cooking at the William Amglis Commercial Cookery Schools and later pursued a Diploma of Associate Hospitality at the Ryde Technical and Hospitality College, Sydney. Ong has been a chef for more than 20 years and is currently the executive chef (the highest chef position in a five-star hotel) for the Sofitel Wentworth in Sydney, Australia. His day starts at 8am and does not end until 9.30pm. He is in charge of two restaurants, 436 hotel rooms and 10 banquet rooms, including a 700-seat ballroom. A typical day begins with briefing his sous chef, spot-checking the entire kitchen and getting ready for the busy morning breakfast. Throughout the day he juggles with constant checks on the hygiene of workers and their food handling, quality of produce, tasting food and preparing menus for various clientele groups. Ong’s signature dish in the fine dining restaurant is the slow roasted pork belly with vanilla apple, a fusion of his Chinese heritage and the French cuisine techniques he learned from working with renowned French chefs, Paul Bocuse, and Albert and Michael Roux at the Sydney Intercontinental Hotel. The most interesting part of his work is experiencing the best of every facet of the food industry – working with well-known chefs, eating the best foods and travelling to interesting places. The main challenge is cooking good food consistently and keeping up to date with the changing style of food and consumer demands. Ong once cooked for Prince Charles when the latter attended a VVIP cocktail function for 3,000 guests at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre in 1997. “To service such a big event with precision, we used CB radios to coordinate the 30 service sections for the timing of cooking and serving. Minutes prior to serving, a Korean man fired at Prince Charles with an air pistol and caused pandemonium. I did not know what was happening then and could not co-ordinate with my chefs to delay the cooking process. We had 30,000 pieces of canapés in the oven and most of them were over-cooked!” he says. Ong cooks Malaysian food upon request and the most popular dish is satay with peanut sauce. “You will be surprised at how in touch the Australians in major cities are with Asian food. There are two top 10 worlds’ best restaurants in Sydney - Tetsuya and Rockpool – the equivalent of three Michelin Star of Allan Ducase in Paris, which not a lot of countries can claim,” he says. Ong plans to return to Malaysia when he retires or if there is a good job offer. “Ten years ago I applied for a job in a hotel in Kuala Lumpur and I was disappointed with the low perception that people have of Malaysian chefs,” he says. “It’s a shame that most of our hotels think that you have to be a Swiss, German or French to be able to manage and cook in an international hotel,” he said. Ong started out as a chef de partie and was promoted to sous chef and oversaw 16 chefs at the Sydney Intercontinental Hotel when it opened in 1985. He worked there for three years specialising in sauces, vegetables, ice carving and garde manger. He then served six years as executive chef at the Sydney Convention and Exhibition Centre, the largest conference centre in the southern hemisphere. Ong moved to the Summit Restaurant in Sydney, one of the few fine dining revolving restaurants in the world and which served contemporary food. He was executive chef there for six years. Later, he joined Accor Premier, a five-star international hotel where he took charge of 60 kitchen staff members and made changes to food styles and set culinary directions for the hotel before he moved to Sofitel Wentworth. “My career has been a steady progression of acquiring knowledge. There are no shortcuts, just plain hard work,” says Ong who lives a half hour’s drive away from Sydney with his wife and two teenage daughters. In his free time, Ong, a self-confessed sports freak, plays golf and watches sports religiously. “It helps me switch off from my work,” he says. He also likes dining out. If he does cook at home, Ong loves to fry koay teow, cook laksa and curries. Ong returns to Batu Pahat, Johor, where his parents and siblings are, every few of years.