In a land as vast and bountiful as Thailand, there is much to discover beneath the soil and seas. Most of us are familiar with the country’s irrepressibly sweet honey mangoes, Hom Mali rice, and peppery betel leaves. But there is so much more for cooks to work with, as Arne Riehn, the head chef of Michelin-starred restaurant IGNIV Bangkok, discovered.
Riehn arrived in the Thai capital in 2019. His mission: To bring the restaurant’s Swiss heritage to life using the produce his new home had to offer. Much to his surprise, Thai chocolate was among the best of them.
“Thai chocolate is one of the best I’ve tried,” he said. “The chocolate we use comes from Chanthaburi. It’s a 70 per cent single origin grown in an area where they grow fruit that Thailand is famous for, like mangosteen, durian, and mango, so the chocolate has fruity flavours. I think it’s even better than Swiss chocolate.” That’s a strong statement from a German chef who trained at vaunted European restaurants like three-Michelin-starred Vendome in Germany and now works for well-known Swiss chef Andreas Caminada.
So enamoured is Riehn of Thai chocolate that it is the only chocolate he uses in his desserts at IGNIV, which, incidentally, are all vegan save for a chocolate souffle.
“It’s always my goal to step away from French techniques since we already use them so much (in our savoury courses), so I wanted to celebrate the potential of Thai ingredients in dessert as much as I can,” he added. Coconut milk, for example, plentiful across Thailand, is a worthy substitute for dairy milk since it is rich in fat. So too soy milk, rice milk, and roasted rice milk, all of which he utilises.