A single malt at the first table

One summer night in August 2014 I cooked a four-course degustation at Brasserie Enfin to go with three Glenmorangie expressions. Esquire Malaysia wrote it up as Whisky for Dinner. The maison's own line at the time, "the purveyor of all things 'unnecessary well made'", described how I already wanted to cook. It was one of the first pairings of the Brasserie Enfin years.

Why Glenmorangie

Glenmorangie is a Highland single malt from the distillery at Tain in Ross-shire, founded in 1843. It is light and fragrant, with a complexity that comes from what the distillery calls the tallest copper stills in Scotland. They stand just over five metres high, and give the spirit room to refine itself before it reaches a cask.

Highland and Speyside are very different whiskies. The sherry-cask Speyside style of The Macallan and the 2.81-times-distilled Speyside style of Mortlach both speak in a heavier voice than Glenmorangie. A Highland malt needs a plate that respects its lightness. Whisky for Dinner was cooked for that.

The maison’s phrase, “unnecessary well made”, matters here. It means going past what is strictly needed, into the part that makes the work worth doing. I cooked to that idea, course by course.

“Yoga of the Senses”: what sits under the pairing

This was one of my first whisky partnerships. Most chefs avoid pairing food with high-strength spirits, because the alcohol overwhelms the plate, the plate goes flat against the spirit, and the guest gets the best of neither. Asian ingredients opened another way in. The deeper aromatics from my Malaysian and Borneo cooking, such as torch ginger, sambal heat, ferments and sharp pickles, stood up to the depth of a Highland malt. Course by course I learned to train the senses, and the palate, to taste whisky and food together. I called it Yoga of the Senses.

Luxurious Magazine covered the evening for readers abroad and put it plainly in its headline: Glenmorangie Hosts The “Perfect Pairing” For A Celebration Of All Things “Unnecessarily Well Made”. The maison’s habit of going past what is needed met my own habit of training the palate to notice what it would otherwise miss. “Unnecessarily well made” turned out to describe both of us.

Whisky for Dinner, Brasserie Enfin, August 2014

Esquire Malaysia published the piece on 4 August 2014 in its Living section. There were four courses and three Glenmorangie expressions, and the glass and the plate talked to each other all evening. Each expression was the focus of the course it came with. None of them was there for decoration.

iGlenmorangie The Originalthe ten-year-old, the maison's signature

Canadian oyster, lemon and ginger gelée.

iiGlenmorangie The Originalthe same pour, a second course

Hokkaido scallop, Scottish salmon pearl, fennel and almond crème.

iiiGlenmorangie 18 Years Oldthe aged Highland expression

Charcoal-grilled duck leg, Enfin's honey and citrus reduction, fondant roots.

ivGlenmorangie Signetchocolate malt barley, the most layered of the range

Fire-roasted pineapple mille-feuille, handmade dark chocolate truffle.

It was a private dining menu, offered on request for at least ten guests at Brasserie Enfin. Esquire summed it up in a phrase I still remember: “Glenmorangie has a suggestion for you.” Together, the maison and I were offering something that was still rare in Kuala Lumpur: a Highland single malt at the centre of a four-course bistro dinner at Oasis Square, in August 2014.

The four courses, photographed through the evening. Scroll through them.

The first year: what was already happening

Glenmorangie was one of several things happening at once. My Krug Ambassade work had begun two months earlier, and the Hennessy Appreciation Grows programme would follow two months later, from 30 September to 4 October 2014. The cooking that later grew into the Krug Chef’s Table at Menara Hap Seng and the Hennessy Salon at Enfin was already being worked out, course by course, in a bistro on the western edge of Petaling Jaya, in August 2014.

Glenmorangie was the first time that work reached the public record.

Glenmorangie in the rooms that followed

Whisky for Dinner happened at Brasserie Enfin, but Glenmorangie stayed on the table in the rooms that came after. At Enfin in Menara Hap Seng, and later at Shin’Labo, it came back in our cocktail menus, in serves like the Highland Sazerac, made with Hennessy X.O and absinthe. A house whisky and a sister maison’s cognac in one glass: the MHD family made that kind of serve easy.

Tatler Asia’s later coverage of Enfin recorded these cocktail menus. The maison stayed at the table while the format changed.

The Malaysian counterpart

Glenmorangie belongs to the Moët Hennessy / LVMH portfolio. In Malaysia the joint venture Moët Hennessy Diageo Malaysia (MHD) distributes it with its sister houses, and the same MHD team has worked with me on it over the years.

That matters to me. The Glenmorangie evening in 2014 was part of a long relationship with the same people, the one that has kept my spirits and champagne work together ever since.