Chef Talk: William Mahi

William Mahi is the Chef de Cuisine at Lan Club, where he presides over Papillon, the most lepidopterist-friendly restaurant in Shanghai. He told TALK about his prodigious beginnings, bombs in Beirut and the worst insult a chef in China can get.

William Mahi’s cooking career really began when he was kicked out of hospitality school in his home town of Biarritz, in Southwest France. “Unfortunately I didn’t like it. Most of the time I slept, and when I woke up, I enjoyed time with my comrades in the classroom.”

He decided he wanted to be a chef’s apprentice and at age 14 he began working in a five star restaurant, and studying for a one year diploma in Bayonne. On completing the qualification, his teacher sent him to a one Michelin star restaurant in his home town, Table des Fréres Ibarboure, to work as an apprentice. “I think he found me a bit different, with a bit more juice, more energy. And you know in Michelin star restaurants you must have energy.”

Just two years later he was named the Best Apprentice in France. One month before the competition, apprentices were given a list of ingredients and told to prepare dishes that expressed themselves. “My boss wasn’t there,” he recalls. “I was alone in Paris. The first time I went there.”

Mahi grabs his own leg as he describes the stuffed chicken leg he prepared for the competition. Things didn’t go exactly to plan. “We had one oven for 20 boys, with different types of cooking,” Mahi says, and he didn’t think he could use the steam technique he had planned. Ruffled, he asked the judge, three Michelin star chef Claude Delyne – who Mahi considers the best chef in France at that time – how he could possibly do it. Delyne suggested cooking the chicken in the stock, and though he had never tried the method before, Mahi pulled it off.

Regarding the competition, Mahi says, “I’m proud, but that’s not something I talk about often. That kind of thing is a kind of personal satisfaction.” Yet, he says, “that prize gave me an open door to open a restaurant anywhere.”
Mahi worked in Michelin-starred restaurants around France for almost nine years, before taking a job as the Executive Chef at the InterContinental, Beirut. “My first night, at seven o’clock I woke up with a huge car bomb, maybe one or two kilometres away.”

The hostile environment was an unwelcome reminder of attacks by separatists in the Basque area where he grew up. “In my home town there are many attacks. This one part, Pays Basque [which extends into France and Spain] wants to separate. In Spain they kill. In France they target government buildings, McDonald's – but they are smart, they call first.” In Beirut, bombers don’t always give advance notice.

Mahi’s first job in Shanghai was as the Executive Chef of Kee Club. It was there he ran into the worst customer he has ever had. A man who had eaten everything on his plate, and finished the meals of his two female companions, asked to speak to the chef. “You know what he told me? He said my food was very close to that on China Eastern Airlines.” That’s bad. “I invited him to leave and I paid for the meal.”

There is nothing China Eastern about Mahi’s food: wonderful, distinct flavours, with lots of seafood and some spectacular, rich desserts.

Mahi recently introduced an avant garde table at Papillon. “What I will present is what you will eat, if everybody follows actual fashion, 10 years later.” Ten years from where Shanghai is at the moment, or where the world is at the moment?

“Good question,” he grins.

William Mahi is Chef de Cuisine at Lan Club, 102 Guangdong Lu, near Sichuan Lu. Tel: 6323 8029.

 

Mahi's Chocolate Mousse

Ingredients:
15 egg whites
50g sugar
120g sugar

Technique:
Put the chocolate and butter in a Bain-Marie to smelt
Take out of the Bain-Marie and mix in the yolk with a spatula
Put the egg whites in a mixer with a little bit of salt and sugar and mix. Stop when the eggs whites become stiff
Incorporate the egg whites into the chocolate five times and mix with a spatula
Put in a container and refrigerate

Tip:
It’s best to do these preparations 24 hours before serving

Spicy sauce:
150g cacao powder
600g water
100g sugar
50g butter
Spice (cloves, cinnamon, star anise)

Technique:
Boil everything (except the spices)
Add the spices after filtering the liquid, when the mixture has cooled
Refrigerate

Serving:
Serve the mousse in glasses with a small pool of spicy sauce.