Step into the gilded slippers of French royalty at this extravagant degustation which takes a page from one of France's most revered institutions, the Palace of Versailles
The epicentre of French government from 1682 until 1789, the Palace of Versailles was Louis XIV's pet project turned obsession. Originally the king's hunting lodge and a cosy château, the extravagant palace and its sprawling grounds went through several rounds of renovations, eventually coming to comprise of a porte cochère, an opera house, fruit and vegetable gardens, several banquet halls, royal residences, and more.
"There were mistress chambers too—and not just one," winks Clemente Torrente, chef de cuisine at the St. Regis Kuala Lumpur.
"Everyone needs to visit Château de Versailles at least twice in their lives!" asserts head pastry chef Gael Moutet. "You cannot see everything in a single visit."
Torrente and Moutet, two Frenchmen stationed at The St Regis Kuala Lumpur for a time, have put their heads together to come up with a deluxe menu that reflects what French royals ate from the 1600s to the 1700s. According to Carreme, "It was a revolutionary time in French cuisine."
Read on for more ravishing details about The Feast of Versailles, which unfolds at The Brasserie on Sept 25, Oct 23 and Nov 27, 2020.
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1. Palace Tour: The King's Garden
Served in antique-looking silverware to create a sense of time and place, a quartet of amuse-bouches kicks off The Feast of Versailles at The Brasserie. It is here where we first learn about the Potager du roi or 'the king's kitchen garden'. One hors d'œuvre in particular, the dime-sized Vegetables Tartelette, is a direct homage to the famed garden in the Palace of Versailles.
"Louis XIV worked with his gardener to build his personal potager (kitchen garden) for the royal household," explained Torrente. "Compared to now, fresh vegetables didn't come by so easily and were often subject to crop diseases. The king's produce was sometimes passed down to his subjects, who suffered a lot from famine and malnutrition."
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