James Won is a Krug Ambassade, one of the few who have been chosen globally to showcase the complexity and uniqueness of the Krug champagnes. Currently housed at Shin’Labo, his flagship “transcendental dining”, we speak to him to find out how he has approached this year’s Krug selected ingredient… the lemon.
Can you tell us a bit about Shin’Labo, its inception and cuisine style?
Shin’labo is an MCO baby where the idea and purpose was to pivot and to change the way how I believe F&B should be operated in the country. Because my previous iterations were very big space, the type that you can host luxurious parties with a marble bar, et cetera, et cetera. I felt that after MCO, people start to look at gathering and how they host their gatherings in a very different manner. That’s why I wanted to change the design and the concept of what I felt that we should be focusing on. The space is not any smaller, the only difference is that it’s single level. If you remember Enfin, it’s double level with a mezzanine. This time, I didn’t go that crazy, I only built single level. The way things are built around Shin’labo, it’s very intimate and personalised. You’ll feel like you’re going into your own kitchen.
Tell us about the Krug Chef’s Table…
The Krug chef’s table sits up to 18 people with its own laboratory or little atelier with a kitchenette by Miele, a little space with karaoke and a private restroom. That room was purposely built in a way to take on music in a more serious manner, so the acoustic and the soundproofing of the room is professionally engineered. It has its own plaster ceiling and is soundproofed to a level where you can’t hear the air conditioning. That’s why when you speak in there, it’s very comfortable. It doesn’t echo when you use the sound system. There’re no deaf spots. So, one of the big reason with the brand Krug, is that it has never been executed to this level, where there’s a music pairing with every bottle of Krug. It’s expressed by professional musician in all genres and scientifically studied and put together. So it’s not just artists and musician expressing creation, but it’s also scientifically matched.
What experience are you trying to deliver to your patrons?
It’s part of the senses that you cannot deny when you want to really experience cuisine at the highest level. Good cuisine must, and I repeat, must trigger and activate all your senses, not just the five, but the 6th and the 7th sense. It must evoke your memory; it has to evoke even taste in your mouth. Just like when you are in fear, the taste bud is different. When you are feeling stressed, it tastes different when you are happy, it tastes different. Music has the same ability. Now, imagine now if your entire universe has been activated at all levels. This is very important. And that’s the reason why when you come and dine at the Krug chef’s table, you have that full immersed, 3-D, 4-D, I would say kind of experience. You’re not just coming down to drink champagne and eat food.
What is your personal philosophy when it comes to your cuisine?
Simplicity is the highest form of art. Effortless is criteria number two. So as one matures in your technical prowess, you start to look for simplicity. As you mature, you have less to prove, less to shout, less to yell. So you don’t spend time in trying to express 15 ideas on a plate. This year, the lemon takes the spotlight. All I want now is to express one perfect idea, therefore, looking at single ingredients, it is very challenging. It’s not simple, but you see, I express lemon in all different forms. Not just the peel, not the juice, not the rind, not just the aroma. I express every single thing that you don’t even think about that I can get from the lemon. One idea, just multiple language. So, you shouldn’t look at food as, oh, now I’m only in molecular gastronomy, or I’m only in contemporary. There’re so many people out there trying to use the most difficult vocabulary, but really, we didn’t invent cooking. We can narrate and express ourselves individually by giving our emotion, thoughts, and expressions in a very pure form. Just one singular method, but different language. If you look at the pictures, I try to remove things. I express with my white background that looks like snow and not with paint. You get where I’m coming from? It’s all about the details. When there’s no makeup, you spend all time finding the perfect ingredient or technique to amplify that single ingredient.
Can you tell us how this year’s special ingredient, the lemon and how you use it from a culinary perspective?
First, we need to talk about sour ingredients with champagne, just like Manuel or Julie, our master blender Chef de Cave will tell you, don’t bother pairing dessert with Krug. But I did it this time and Manuel, when he came and tasted it, he was quite blown away. I debunk and demyth one of the faux pas of dessert with the champagne. Reason is because we don’t like artificial sweetness or too much sweetness to go with the champagne. So it kind of nullifies the taste of the champagne. When you have something really sour, acidic, or expressive like the lemon, you will have the same issue. How do we bring out that subtlety, the finesse, the beauty of the lemon? I had to start ideating through the point of how do we use lemon? Why do we use lemon from a culinary point Do we use it for other purpose and even spiritually? I decided to use it like Zen meditation in a rock garden. I removed the rocks and I put in the lemon because I wanted to really point out the importance of how something so small can be so powerful and how magical it can also be if you use it right.
Tell us about your approach with pairing the Krug champagnes.
The technique is a combination of what we call contrast pairing and complementary pairing. Contrast is when we deliberately activate flavours or aroma with introducing an ingredient that by nature doesn’t work, but chemically, when you introduce it, it will actually bring forth something that you didn’t know it was there, a simple thing like bitter sweet. Now, bitter is very interesting. If we look at bitter in a good way, it’s a high concentration of umami. So when you have a super amount of umami, it becomes very bitter, bitter savoury, bitter sweet. So it’s overexpressing of a certain concentrated amount of certain molecule. But if you dial it down, and if you use something to dial it down or dilute it, or to mute it a bit, you may bring out something that you didn’t know it was there. So contrast pairing can do that. Complementary pairing is the lazy way. You will hear the Chef de Cave’s tasting notes saying it tastes of honey, peaches, butter and popcorn and whatever else, you go and make sure you put a bit of corn, a bit of butter, put a bit of peach. You cannot go wrong. But what does it not do? It doesn’t give you magic, it doesn’t give you the next layer of complexity or bring forward the hidden grace that you didn’t know it was there.
How do you pair the Krug Krug Rosé 26ème Edition?
Throughout my menu, I go up and down and I give you a nice undulating tasting rather than just a flat out. I deliberately start with the Rosé and then the Grande Cuvée. It depends on how I want to charter the whole course, whether my cuisine is flexible enough to actually give you that kind of experience. So the Rosé with the lemon, it gives you texture, because rosé is a mixture of red and white, there’s a lot of bouquet that is hidden, but it can be overly concentrated, especially the Krug Rosé, because it’s very robust rosé. The colour is not a typical light pink kind of colour, so a bit of acidity, a bit of oil from the lemon actually punctuates it and gives it a very refreshing, a lighter feel.
How about the Krug Grande Cuvée 170ème Edition?
Grande Cuvée is a very complex champagne. It’s very expressive. So the idea is not to try to challenge that expression, but how do we find the little greys that are already not so prominent in our palate? How can we bring that forward? How can we amplify? How can we centre stage something that is very interesting but not apparent when we normally taste Krug. For this menu, when we got together in Capri with the rest of the ambassadors, we were all cursing. You guys got nothing better to do than asking us to go and do a whole tasting menu based on lemon Seriously, lemon and champagne? And this is House of Krug. But then as we sat down, we were laughing and kicking, and when you get some of the best chefs in the world sitting down, you kind of learn some good ideas from everybody. How do we not allow Krug to overexpress the lemon? Krug is how to best put it, t’s like some females, they will age very gracefully, and as they age, they become more beautiful. Because not just looks, but also personality shines. They have that depth, they have that complexity. This is Krug.
So the lemon, unlike what everyone thinks, will not mute the champagne, the champagne can stand up to it. The point of this single ingredient pairing is to make it more delicious and to showcase something that we never thought about. Again, who says all lemons are sour? In the Amalfi Coast, lemons are sweet. You eat them raw, you slice them really thin, you put it with your beef, you put it with your fish, you put it in your salad. It’s not bitter. This gave me a great idea on fermenting curing that has been infused, and how to transform ingredient into my cooking.
What’s your favourite dish on the menu?
If you think of my star dish, the chawanmushi with caviar, it’s egg with chrysanthemum broth, you would expect bitter and fragrant, but egg can be very strong. And then you have this fermented dried lemon peel in a broth with smoked aged kampachi bones. It’s my favourite and has now become a signature and something I’m very proud of, because to able to and execute that dish at that level without overtaking the humbleness of the lemon and the egg with all the different texture, requires a lot of technical finesse. I’m very proud, not of myself, but of my team, because it really shows that they have matured a lot through time. It’s so silent, but it’s so elegant. When you think of that dish and how the Grande Cuvée plays with that dish, you cannot stop.
Can you tell us something about Shin’Labo that many might not be aware of?
Well, a lot of people didn’t know that we are one out of the five Krug chef’s table in the world, the only one in Asia Pacific. It’s a little bit different from the Krug rooms because we don’t really have any more Krug rooms. That room is something very different from the rest because we are the only room that is totally bespoke in its own way to express music and the champagne. From the cutlery and tableware to glassware and furniture, it’s all bespoked. It’s a collaboration of myself with designers and craft makers. I’m very much involved in every single aspect of the design and build, and some of it is even my own personal design. We don’t do normal menus in there, as we showcase what we are working on, some of the crazy things that we want to express, some of the not so conventional stuff. I would like more people to know that it’s not that expensive, despite how everybody thinks. It’s very affordable. The other thing to know is that you can’t really enjoy the full range of Krug champagnes other than at Shin’labo.In this country, there’s no other place that will have the full range of Krug champagnes, from vintages to limited private collections, to the elusive d’Ambonnay and Clos du Mesnil.
Shin’Labo
2, Jln Hang Tuah,
Bukit Bintang,
50450 Kuala Lumpur
+6017 916 6991
Opening Hours:
Tuesdays to Sundays, 12.00 am to 12.00 pm
Closed Mondays.