It Is Not What It Is: RAW by André Chiang

The glass front door is still deceptively heavy. The transparency of the material belies the effort it takes to open the door and enter restaurant RAW. The disconnect between perception and reality does not end at the front door but continues throughout the experience of the meal. Eating at RAW is not what it seems to be.

I haven't been back to RAW in five years. The main reason is it is simply too hard to make a reservation, arguably the most difficult in Taipei. Under the direction of Taiwanese celebrity chef André Chiang, the dining room at RAW is always full. Even the Covid-19 pandemic and the ban on foreign tourists in Taiwan have not slowed the business down. The other reason I haven’t returned is I am ambivalent about my previous dining experience. I don’t feel the strong urge to dine at RAW again. Recently at the invitation of a friend I have finally returned to RAW to dine for the second time. 

RAW of 2020 is a different restaurant from five plus years ago when it first started. Now the restaurant has two Michelin stars instead of none. Does the restaurant provide a two-star dining experience? The price of the menu has almost doubled since the restaurant first started. Is a meal there now twice as good as my last visit? The answers to both questions are, in short, not really.

Stepping inside I see the interior hasn't changed much. The space is well maintained and everything still looks new. I still like the design except for the text by George Calombaris on the concrete wall near the entry. The space at the front of the restaurant remains empty but recently has found a new purpose: for diners to sit down, fill out their travel histories, and have their temperatures checked. 

While RAW still looks and feels the same as when it opened in late 2014, the circumstances have changed significantly. Five-plus years ago, Chiang was still cooking everyday and chasing Michelin stars at his eponymous fine dining restaurant in Singapore. RAW was just an outpost in his home country and designed to be a bistronomy. In 2016 Restaurant André received two Michelin stars in Singapore’s inaugural Michelin Guide. At that time, there were rumors that Chiang was originally slated to receive just one star. The rating was changed to two stars at the last minute due to the lobbying of the Singapore authorities. The story is unconfirmed but certainly intriguing.

In October of 2017, Chiang abruptly announced he was closing his flagship restaurant in Singapore and “returning” his Michelin stars. Moreover he was leaving Singapore and moving back to Taiwan. To signal his complete disinterest in the Michelin stars, Chiang even asked Michelin to exclude RAW from the upcoming 2018 Taipei guide. This request was strange given Chiang’s entire career and reputation were built on the associations with the Michelin Guide. His personal library in Singapore contained a collection of Michelin Guide of France spanning decades. Was Chiang really breaking up with Michelin?

Chiang knew how to play hard to get. To no one’s surprise, when Michelin launched the guide in Taipei, they ignored Chiang’s request and awarded RAW with one star. Thumbing his nose at Michelin didn’t have any negative effect; actually just the opposite. One year later in 2019, Michelin upgraded RAW to two stars and decided the restaurant is just as good as Restaurant André was in Singapore. 

In Singapore Chiang was working in the kitchen full-time and got two stars. In Taipei, he gets two stars even when he doesn’t even want any. Instead of being on his feet all day in Singapore, he just cooks for his mom and wife at his home in Yilan, an hour drive outside of Taipei. Chiang is a smart man and must be laughing all the way to the bank. He is the most famous Taiwanese chef in the world. Michelin in Taipei needs him. 

Moving from Singapore to Taiwan means RAW has become the main signature restaurant of Chiang. RAW is also a restaurant he almost never cooked in and still doesn’t. Since the restaurant’s opening, the person running the day-to-day operation has been his trusted Chef de Cuisine Alain Huang. Chiang simply designs the menu and Huang executes the dishes on his behalf. However, I am surprised at how little input Huang seems to have on the menu. After I finish my recent meal, I ask Huang about some of the decisions on the dishes, he seems to suggest they are all made by Chiang. 

There used to be only one menu at RAW, NT$1,800 for 8 courses and everyone ate the same dishes. The socialist nature of the restaurant is no longer present. Now there are three choices: NT$1,850, NT$2,680, and NT$3,500. The pricier menus come with more courses and fancier ingredients. Since a meal at the restaurant is so hard to come by, my friend and I opt for the most expensive menu. I want the whole experience. 

Prior to dining at RAW I have already saw the pictures of the dishes on many websites and publications. Just about all of them simply regurgitate the press release from the restaurant: how the new menu is all about the celebration of spring and the increasing awareness on sustainability. Chiang is a master of publicity and he knows the media in Taiwan love and crave access to him. The media in Taiwan are essentially his mouthpieces. They don’t question or review his food.

The eleven-course spring menu starts with a nice and delicate green strawberry tart. However, the season for strawberry in Taiwan is not in spring but winter. Why start the spring menu with an unripe strawberry? The accompanying ice has a nice and subtle flavor but is too much in terms of portion. After the third bite I am bored and don’t want to finish it.

The second dish is very interesting, a salmon collagen with wasabi presented in a cocktail dish with chopsticks. It’s a pretty dish. A cup of fish soup is served on the side. The texture and flavors are very good. 

The third course is an escabeche which is served in a small rectangular tin with a bread on the side. I only wish the restaurant would provide a bit more bread. Why not be a bit more generous? Escabeche is a dish that originated from Persia and is now commonly found in the Mediterranean coast of Spain. It is basically a way to preserve fish or meat in vinegar. Eating this dish reminds me of my trip to Barcelona. This is another nice dish with great flavors. However, I don’t know why escabeche represents spring or Taiwan. It feels like a dish that Chiang just wants to make.

After we finish the course, a loaf of bread is brought to the table. Since we order the most expensive menu, the bread is included. The bread seems to be the same as the one on my first visit and remains quite nice. I still don’t know whether the bread is made in-house or not. 

The fourth course is a salad with various spring leaves, seaweed, and mackerel served on the side. I enjoy the dish. The vegetables are fresh and delicious and the dressing is very flavorful. I am ambivalent about whether I need the mackerels or not. They are served on an ice pack inside a styrofoam-like bento box. The presentation is unappetizing. 

The next course is a cold pasta inspired by the Italian Spaghetti alle Vongole. Chiang makes the kitchen braid the pasta and the vegetable for a great visual effect. I don’t understand the use of almond cream which clashes with the marinated cockles. The dish looks better than it tastes and is designed to be on Instagram. The temperature of the dish is also not appealing.

As if one dish of vegetables is not enough to celebrate spring, the kitchen brings out another dish of vegetables; this time lukewarm instead of cold. The vegetables are topped with a truffle cream sauce, which I don’t understand at all. If the menu is an ode to spring, why use an ingredient from winter? Putting aside the idea of representing spring, where does one get good truffle at the end of April? Not from France, Italy, nor Australia. The scent of the truffle seems artificial. Would a world famous two-Michelin star chef choose to use truffle oil for a dish? 

After six courses, I am hoping to finally get a dish that is hot. But my wish does not come true. RAW is a restaurant of cold and lukewarm food. You will never hear the phrase, “be careful the plate is hot” from the server. The only food that is hot to the touch is the bread. But bread should not be served hot as it disguises the quality. Also anyone who makes crusty bread knows that the bread needs to cool down for the crust to develop. If a diner is eating hot bread in the restaurant it is because the kitchen has reheated the bread. 

The last two savory courses are both done with fresh pork. I wish the restaurant would not repeat an ingredient for a tasting menu. I suppose we can’t expect restaurants to be like the French Laundry where ingredients don’t repeat over the course of a meal. Moreover, while fresh pork is a meat the Chinese like to eat, it is not an ingredient associated with spring. Before the ubiquity of refrigerators, pigs were slaughtered in the winter and mostly cured to preserve for later. If RAW is suppose to be all about being in tune with the seasons, why not serve lamb or chicken that is more representative of spring?

The first pork dish is essentially a meatball. Every component is well executed and the plating is beautiful and photogenic as always. However, by the time the dish arrives on my table it is not hot enough. This is a disappointment as it reduces the enjoyment of the food significantly. 

The second pork dish is a play on the three layers of pork belly. Instead of an outside skin, a thick layer of fat, and lower portion of pink meat, there is only a layer of pork made from the pigtail. The other layers are made with Chinese yam and mozzarella. The “crackling” on the top is made with peanut which isn’t as nice as a real pork skin and just sticks to my teeth. The sauce is made with peanuts. And there is a dollop of mediocre caviar which seems to be there just to pad the price of the menu. On the side is a “salami” made with fig. It is as if Chiang is just messing with us on purpose. He knows full well that spring is a season for cured pork but he purposely makes it with an inverted flower. Again, the “salami” is more interesting in concept and appearance than taste. This last savory course is the only dish of the meal that I fail to finish. I don’t like it at all. The server says this is a way to eat less meat. But how about making the dish delicious so I will finish the food instead of wasting it. 

After the disappointment with the last savory course, the two desserts that followed can’t come fast enough. The first one is a study on tofu. The server brings over a large house-made tofu to the table, but that’s just a show piece presented to all the tables in the room. The second dessert is Chiang’s take on the traditional red “turtle” cake. The cake is delicious. Both desserts are excellent and I enjoy them very much. The last time I was at RAW, the dessert was a disappointment. This time the desserts are the highlights of the meal.

While the food at RAW has some high and low points, the service is substandard. RAW should be glad that the Michelin Guide doesn’t consider service as part of the criteria for awarding stars. When one dines at a Michelin two-star restaurant, one expects a certain level of professionalism. For instance, the services at the two-star restaurants Jean Georges or Daniel in New York City are impeccable. The front of house staff are not only experienced but very knowledgeable. In contrast, the servers at RAW feel like they either just graduated from culinary school or they are interns. They cannot even set the cutlery properly on the table. They are not trained and simply memorized a script to repeat to the diners. They also have zero awareness of the diner’s needs.

The servers are lackadaisical. My friend’s napkin falls on the floor, the server takes it away but doesn’t replace it. My sparkling water is refilled with flat. The drinking glass for the beer is removed before the bottle is emptied. The server asks to remove the bread before the main course. What’s the hurry? Does the dishwasher need to go home early? What if I want to sop up the sauce when the main course is served? The runner brings the food on a tray, but there is no server to deliver them to the table. This happens more than once. At the second time I ask the the runner to not wait for a server and just bring the food to the table. I hate to see the food idling and dying due to bad service. 

When the warm vegetable dish is brought to the table, I ask the server where does the truffle come from given we are at the end of April? She says she doesn’t know but would get back to me. A while later, she comes to our table to serve another dish and I ask her again about the origin. She only says the restaurant uses truffle from France, Australia and China. So I ask again where do you get the truffle in spring? Again, she says she would ask the kitchen. Towards the end of the meal, I ask the server for the third time and she still doesn’t know. I suppose this question is not part of a memorized script or it is some secret. Eventually the Chef de Cuisine comes to our table and says the truffles are not fresh but preserved in oil from the winter. He doesn’t explain why an ingredient associated with winter is required to prepare a menu for the spring. I am also tempted to ask don’t you have pre-shift meetings? Why don’t you train your staff to know where the food you are serving come from?

The menu of RAW changes with the seasons. Every time the change takes place it is like a cultural event in Taipei. If you hang around with hipsters, you probably will hear the phrase, “Have you tried this season’s menu at RAW?” Eating at RAW is similar to attending a fashion show to see the latest trends. The clothes on the fashion runways are often times styled more for effect and the media instead of wearability and beauty. The primary concern of the cooking at RAW is also for concepts and publicity instead of deliciousness. Unfortunately the spring 2020 menu at RAW does not express a coherent set of ideas. The dishes don’t form a good story nor celebrate the season. The diners at RAW are just paying money to participate in Chiang’s whimsical experiments. 

Chiang has become the face of the Taiwanese food scene. Promoted by everyone, including himself, Chiang is the golden boy and can do no wrong. But eating at RAW, I cannot help but wonder if this is just like “The Emperor’s New Clothes” by Hans Christian Andersen. The only difference is Chiang is not just the emperor but he is also the weaver. He is one of the smartest chefs in the world. He seems to be knowingly parading nonsensical food to the public. Every season the people await his new creations, snatch up the reservations, and applaud after the meals. 

This doesn’t mean RAW is a restaurant to be avoided. If I am a tourist coming from abroad, I would certainly want to eat at RAW to see what all the fuss is about. While I don’t like every dish, I do appreciate the creativity. Experimentation always comes with the possibility of failure. If one doesn’t fail then perhaps one is not daring enough. RAW remains an interesting place to have a thought-provoking meal. RAW is just not a place to have a delicious meal that makes you want to come back the next day to eat it again.