Fruit Carvings and Chocolate Sculptures
It is amazing that when in the right hands, a humble piece of fruit or vegetable can be transformed in to a piece of art.
Daikon and Carrots.
Melons (before).
Melons (after).
Daikon, Carrot and Melon on the table.
At the restaurant we don’t garnish our dishes with fruit carvings unlike other Asian restaurants, but when former Laocook member Phaitoon popped over for a visit, we couldn’t help ourselves and decided to enlist him to create some centre pieces for our tables.
Fruit Carving is an art and it takes a huge amount of practice and patience to create such wonderful looking pieces.
Phaitoon happily donned on a cooks jacket and armed with a small knife he set to work through our Fruit and Vegetable fridge.
Not content with Melons, Daikon and Carrots he started on our Pumpkins.
Pumpkins are good for carving as they have a firmer flesh which means you can have more detail.
Some of the Daikon “flowers” were dipped in to food colouring.
With some added green foliage, the blend of colours became more apparent.
To keep the pieces “fresh” they are draped in wet cloths and if taken care of, can last for a few days.
Meanwhile one floor below us in our Pastry Kitchens, Chef Pâtissier Akiyama was busy in his chilled room sculpting with Chocolate!
Unlike our Vegatable pieces, all of Chef Akiyama´s pieces can be eaten!
Special colouring is used to paint and colour the chocolate.
Some of the pieces are extremely fragile.
All of these pieces were of course created for our special Valentines Weekend that was held in the middle of February, hence all the flowers and hearts.
Needless to say, we all had fun eating disposing of the sculpture on the 15th. 
;) .
March 2nd, 2009 at 3:43 am
Wish I could take a bite out of that melon. What is it? I noticed the box says Amarillo, but I’m not familiar with it.
March 14th, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Hi Elgin,
The box that the melons come in are also used by the supplier for other melons, and they tick off what variety, size and colour the fruit are.
Amarillo is Spanish for yellow (you can see the smudge of the ink next to the word), and below that (not in the photo) is the word Verde, which means green.
:)