Chefs turn fruit, veggies into art

Max Jacobson

Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2000 | 8:22 a.m.

Those of us who dine at buffets on the Strip, or attend food events such as the Gourmet Games, have probably been dazzled by the intricate fruit-and- vegetable carvings that embellish displays and trays of food in those venues.

There's a story behind this art form, which centers around a trio of local Thai women chefs. Their names are Boonme Polak, Jerapa Hendricks and Ann Vongchanglaw. All three have interesting stories to tell.

This art form isn't unique to Thailand, but it has evolved there and is now practiced there on an extremely high level. It was originally practiced in the kitchens of the Royal Thai court, where privileged Thai families had edibles such as mangoes, papayas, watermelons, turnips, beets and squashes carved into wondrous shapes depicting flowers, birds and dragons.

Eventually fruit-and-vegetable carving spread throughout that country, to the point where it is now taught in most grade schools. Though the art form is not religious based, many Thais offer their creations to Buddhist monks. There is even a wonderful restaurant in which to observe fruit-and-vegetable carving at the Regent Hotel of Bangkok. It's name is the Spice Market, and there a team of Thai women chefs demonstrate this compelling art while you dine.

Polak, a stunning woman known as "Well" to her colleagues, works exclusively for the Riviera hotel-casino's Ristorante Italiano, where she creates carvings for the dessert cart and for private parties. Interestingly, the Chef Garde-Manger for the hotel, Conrado Manganti, helped train her. He was trained in his native Phillipines and in his kitchen he proudly displays carvings of his own making in a book of glossy photos.

But Polak insists that she is mainly self-taught, as do the two other women profiled here. Looking at her creations -- artichoke hearts magically transmuted into roses and pieces of honeydew melon transformed into flower petals -- one is hard pressed to imagine how.

"Patience is the key," says Polak. "I never dreamed of doing this when I was younger, but one year I took my husband and children back to Thailand and I saw carvers working in a hotel. So I watched, and much later I began to do it myself."

She modestly admits that what the really accomplished Thai fruit-and- vegetable artists do is beyond her abilities. "The best ones carve animals such as ducks and geese, really hard stuff," she says. She then demonstrates her tools of the trade, an oddly shaped paring knife and a tiny silver utensil that looks like a doll's shoehorn. "One time," she says shyly, "I carved an eagle from a watermelon."

But Ristorante Italiano's Manager David Gross is proud of what he calls her "excellent work," and confides that she also makes a mean Caesar salad, all part of a day's work for this charming, personable artist.

It's quite a bit different over at the Tropicana hotel-casino, where there are two Thai women doing similar work. These two are, one could say, competitors. The rapport between the two is distinctly minimal.

Ann Vongchanglaw wears two hats professionally. In addition to what she does for Tropicana, she also works at Mandalay Bay hotel-casino, where she does chef's carvings for VIP parties and fruit-and-vegetable trays for the high-roller Baccarat Room. Vongchanglaw is a fast, serious and efficient woman. She was a nurse in Thailand before arriving in Las Vegas four years ago.

"I love flowers," she says, "but I wasn't interested in carving until I came to this country." No one hired her, so she went to a trade school where she was trained by a chef named Madero, who showed her pictures of flower arrangements and taught her the rudiments of carving. She developed what Tropicana Banquet Chef Kerry Slagle calls "her extraordinary speed and skill" all by herself.

Her work is beautiful -- pieces of mango carved into the shape of leaves, various vegetables in the shape of flowers and birds, a bouquet of mock roses made completely from watermelon.

She also credits Laotian chef Chanh Boupha of Bally's hotel-casino as a mentor. "He helped me a lot," she says. "I'll carve anything," she add, before departing abruptly, "apples, beets, just give them to me."

The easygoing Jerapa Hendricks also plies her trade at the Tropicana on a part-time basis. She came to the United States at a college student, attending Arizona State University in Tempe. It was there she met her American husband and, in her own words, "broke her family's heart by marrying a man who was not a Thai.

"My family believes in education, but they think I'm too Americanized." After living in North Carolina for 18 years, where she owned a French restaurant in Wilmington called Le Petite Chateau, she decided to retire and move back to Thailand. "I couldn't stand it," she says. "I didn't have to lift a finger and it was so boring I decided to move back to the States."

It was in her native country that she signed up for classes to learn the basic of fruit-and-vegetable carving, which she is still perfecting. Upon her return she worked as a garde-manger at the Monte Carlo hotel-casino before signing on at the Tropicana.

"I'm always creating in my head," she says, smiling. "Sometimes I'll see a bird, like a flamingo on a wall, and I'll wonder how to carve it. Another time I'll see a parakeet, or a beautifully colored flower."

Some of the things she's done are quite impressive. She carved the logo of the Tropicana into the outer rind of a watermelon for a recent food event, and also carved two lovebirds, side-by-side, into that fruit's pink flesh. She says that the most beautiful thing she's ever done was a Thai dragon, also in a watermelon.

Chef Slagle later shows off a book of photos filled with pictures of works by both women; a Mexican papaya with flowers carved into its meat, another watermelon with an elephant carved into the flesh, and radishes, carrots and other vegetables in various guises. It's all quite amazing.

It's even more amazing that three Thai women have made fruits and vegetables into an aesthetic landscape in Las Vegas.