IFT educational restaurant new menu features Nordic and French cuisine

Gravlax with endive and apple salad, served with cumin bread and sweet mustard sauce

A rotational menu for an executive set lunch is being launched at the Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) educational restaurant. Available on weekdays, the new menu  features appetizers, soups and main courses drawn from Nordic and French cuisine. Hans Lee Rasmussen, chef de cuisine at IFT Educational Restaurant, is the creator of the new set lunch.
The Macau-born chef worked at five restaurants in Denmark and Greenland before he returned home to this region. He specializes in Nordic and French cuisine. “To define Nordic kitchen, you have to define that we are a country that depends on four seasons. In March, we have asparagus; in August, we start to have strawberries. So we always have to change the menu. (…) The French way is more the preparation. I use a lot of sauces in my kitchen.”
Chef Hans said that he has been trying to combine the Nordic tradition in the new menu. “The gravlax [raw salmon appetizer] has a classical preparation method in Nordic cuisine, where you take half [a cup] of brown sugar, half salt and half ordinary sugar, and then you preserve the item,” he said.
Chef Hans graduated from Copenhagen Hospitality College, Demark, in 2003, where he won two awards for his culinary creativity. In 2009, he won the first prize at the Wines of Chile Culinary Competition in Copenhagen. After graduation, Chef Hans worked for a Michelin-
starred restaurant for six years, where its menu changed every week. “There was a mass of work, but [it was] very inspiring because you always needed to be able to create all kinds of products.” After being in Copenhagen for a long time, he chose to try something that was “totally opposite.” “So I went to work in Greenland in a mining camp, which was very different. I got all my groceries shipped in by helicopter once a week.”
The chef came to IFT in late April this year. This is the first executive lunch set that he prepared for the restaurant. “I hope that we can follow the seasons and change every three or four months.”
Having a Danish father and a mother from Macau, Chef Hans said that he is interested in exploring Macanese cuisine. “It is also the thought of combining the Danish and Macanese. (…) In a Macanese kitchen, they also like a lot of stews, a lot of pork.” The new executive set lunch starts from August 11.

Grace Yu