When MICHELIN-selected restaurant LA Vie by Thomas Bühner opened in late April 2023, executive chef Xavier Yeung has received all sorts of comments, and was no stranger to harsh feedback also such as that the taste of his cooking was too strong, and the dishes too acidic.
“But slowly, slowly, more and more guests began to appreciate [our style] and they came back slowly,” he says, sharing how a year into the restaurant’s operations, he and chef Thomas Bühner were pleasantly surprised to discover that a large proportion of the business was coming from repeat customers.
Bühner has held the three-MICHELIN-star accolade for La Vie in Germany for seven years, while Yeung himself has worked at some of the most prestigious restaurants including three-MICHELIN-starred Robuchon au Dôme in Macau and two-MICHELIN-starred Amber in Hong Kong. Having put down roots in Taiwan for the last three years, Yeung is familiar with the ingredients, tastes and the local palate. At LA Vie by Thomas Bühner, the two chefs pay homage to Taiwan’s bounty, while maintaining the restaurant’s original European style and character. Acidity, for example, is a key component of their dishes, brightening and balancing other rich flavours to keep the diner’s palate refreshed even after multiple courses.
"We try to bring a little bit of our experience, knowledge and creativity and mix it up with the things we have here," says Bühner.
The menu at LA Vie by Thomas Bühner changes with every season, continuing to be creative and experimental with its dishes. The starting point for Yeung is always the season’s best ingredients, from which he considers what cooking techniques and flavor combinations to apply.
Bühner is also involved in the creative process, though he gives Yeung plenty of leeway to express himself. When Yeung proposed an entree of winter lamb, Bühner did not immediately prescribe five lamb recipes and demand he execute them, but instead, he shared an unforgettable experience he had at three-starred Fat Duck in London where he was served a dish of lamb stew with oysters – a nod to the coastal-dwelling lamb that was reared on a diet that included seaweed. The unexpected flavour combination became the perfect fusion of land and sea.
In Yeung’s rendition, he used lamb from the New Zealand highlands and chose to pair its notes of grass and vanilla with a fragrant, herby green curry. The lamb was seasoned with Italian anchovy sauce, evoking the coastal flavors of Taiwan.
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Again, building on seasonal ingredients and blending them with European culinary techniques and some creativity, Yeung’s rabbit dish for spring features a nose-to-tail preparation, including the liver and heart, as well as a confit of the shoulder, made into a sausage with its skin. Next, the leg meat is mixed with prunes and pistachio and soaked in a blend of whiskey and Nespresso Finezzo, before being wrapped in lacy pork caul fat and steamed, then finally grilled.
As rabbit does not have a strong flavor, the three sauces are the focus of the dish: a crayfish sauce full of sweetness and umami, a sweet and sour sauce combining rabbit bone stock and sage vinegar, as well as a sabayon made with crayfish stock and Nespresso Finezzo. The bitter salinity of the sabayon brings out the flavors of the other sauces, imbuing the dish with an instant pop of color.
Bühner explains that this way of layering flavors is a signature style at LA Vie by Thomas Bühner: “You can sit at the beach and listen to someone playing the guitar, which can be totally nice. But what we want to create, what we want to do, is a concert with different instruments, different layers of taste." he shared.
In this dish, coffee is used in two ways: to marinate the rabbit and bring out the meat's flavor and to create the crucial sabayon. Yeung found that a light roast of the Nespresso Finezzo brought just the right amount of acidity and bitterness, together with a hint of bergamot, to the whipped sabayon.
Both chefs expressed their fascination with the nuanced flavor of coffee from different terroirs and different processing methods, each developing distinct characteristics. While its flavor brings culinary inspiration, coffee is also an indispensable part of their daily routines. Yeung says that in addition to drinking water when he wakes up early in the morning, he also has a cup of coffee. When he has a break during the day, he would sit down with an Americano, while a shot of espresso refreshes and fuels him during busy kitchen services. After a heavy meal out at night, a double shot of espresso aids digestion.
He, on the other hand, is very old school, Bühner says with a smile. He loves coffee and believes that it’s something that needs to be sat down with and savored. To him, coffee is a time of checking in with one another and a moment of communication and exchange, so he treasures mornings with his wife over coffee before the start of a busy day.
Coffee is also an indispensable element of LA Vie by Thomas Bühner and they are now serving Nespresso. "Coffee is the last thing the customer will taste, together with the petit fours. So it's very important to have a stable consistency every time we serve it," says Yeung. Bühner agrees that consistent quality is essential for restaurant service, no matter who makes the coffee. "We are sure it's the same quality, and we can control the quality. Consistency is the most important thing for successful restaurants.”
