Chef Takeover Season 3: A Symphony Of Vietnamese And Chinese Cuisine

Chef Takeover - Vietcetera Edition is a special culinary event where talented chefs blend ingredients and techniques from two cuisines to create unique and innovative meals.

The first two seasons of Chef Takeover captivated diners with remarkable collaborations between two chefs from two different cuisines, such as Chef Peter Cuong Franklin and Chef Han Li Guang (LG Han). In this comeback, for the first time, Chef Takeover featured a collaboration between two Vietnamese female chefs: Chef Summer Le, co-founder and executive chef of Nén Light Saigon and Nén Danang, and Chef Lê Thị Thái from Cham Cantonese Kitchen at the Meliá Hanoi hotel.

Although both chefs had distinct culinary styles, they shared the same appreciation for original flavors and boundless creativity. This shared vision inspired the menu called “A Symphony of Flavors, A Harmony of Cultures.”

What Story Is Told In This Chef Takeover Menu?

As the name suggests, “A Symphony of Flavors, A Harmony of Cultures” represented a fusion of Vietnamese and Cantonese cuisines, blending original flavors with unlimited creativity.

For Chef Summer Le, Vietnamese cuisine, with its rich culture and the diversity of regional ingredients, is an endless source of inspiration. Through each dish and set menu, Chef Summer Le and Nén tell stories about Vietnamese cuisine, using 99% locally sourced ingredients from across the country and Nén Farm itself.

Staying true to her mission of promoting local ingredients, Chef Summer Le delighted diners with special ingredients such as sea almond, wild chestnut, and pheasant in this Chef Takeover menu.

Chef Lê Thị Thái is the Dim Sum chef at Cham Cantonese Kitchen, Meliá Hanoi Hotel. Chef Thái's culinary journey began in 1996 when the first international hotel opened in Vietnam. She was trained extensively in Chinese cuisine for 18 years and later honed her skills at John Anthony restaurant for another 9 years.

To date, dim sum has become Chef Thái’s “companion” for more than 27 years, during which she worked alongside and trained under dim sum masters from China and Singapore.

In the menu A Symphony of Flavors, A Harmony of Cultures, Chef Thái introduced a new dish from Cham Cantonese Kitchen: Lotus-wrapped young sticky rice with crispy roasted suckling pig.

The young sticky rice was crafted with green sticky rice (cốm) from Hanoi's Vong village and featured 8 traditional Chinese ingredients. This dish embodies warmth and is perfect for sharing with friends and family.

Spotlight On The Chef Takeover Experience

Let’s take a look at some unforgettable moments from the recent Chef Takeover event.

Chef Takeover 2024 - Presented by Meliá Hanoi x Vietcetera

Time: 6:00 PM - 9:30 PM, Friday, December 6, 2024
Location: Cham Cantonese Kitchen - Meliá Hanoi, 44B Lý Thường Kiệt, Hoàn Kiếm District, Hanoi