Tara Mitchell meets Thailand’s favourite chef – Norbert Kostner

Norbert Kostner, the Head Chef at The Oriental, has learned that anything can happen when serving Thai Royalty. Take the opening party for the Sirikit Oil Fields in Tak over twenty years ago. They were preparing a buf­fet for 800, a second buffet for 200 people and a set lunch for the members of the Royal family, all of which had to be brought in on trucks.  Due to a miscommunica­tion, the trucks were two hours late.

“The flower girl was crying,” he says, shaking his head and laughing at the memory. “The Thai chef was crying. I was still smoking then, and I was smoking two cigarettes at a time. The helicopter of the Queen Mother was already coming and we were not ready at all, but we still managed.”

The trucks finally arrived, and with them a delicate swan made out of egg whites for the Queen. Chef Norbert was aghast when he caught a man nibbling on the swan. His eyes are full of mirth as he explains: “I went to him and said, ‘What are you doing? This is for her Majesty the Queen! ‘Yes, I know,’ he said, very calmly, ‘but I am the Queen’s food tester.’ Can you imagine?”  Chef Norbert asks.

No, it’s hard to imagine cooking for the world’s most elite clientele and then discussing it with such grace and humour, but then Chef Norbert has picked up a few tricks over the years.

On a busy day, Chef Norbert is responsible for feeding over two thousand people in the nine restaurants of The Oriental. In his 34-year tenure at Bangkok’s legendary hotel, which is steeped in glamour and history, he has served royalty and rock stars, presidents, literary geniuses and Hollywood glitterati. Once, armed guards insisted on escorting him to his own cooler, to fetch the appetizers for former US president Ronald Reagan’s wife, Nancy. It’s all merely a day’s work for Chef Norbert, who shrugs it all off with a self-effacing grin.

“We’ve had some important people come here,” he says, in an understatement typical of his down-to-earth demeanour. We are in the Author’s Wing, which is all that remains of the original hotel that opened in 1887. The walls are covered with black and white pho­tographs of King Chulalongkorn and early guests to The Oriental, such as Crown Prince Nicolas of Russia, who visited in 1891.

“What I tell my cooks is, do not be scared to cook for this and this person,” he continues. “At the end of the day, he’s just like us.”

Chef Norbert is full of surprises: an Italian chef with a German name and a passion for cooking Thai food. The son of a shoe-maker and a wood-carver, he now works in five-star international opulence.

He is from the Dolomites Mountains, a region that was part of Austria until the end of the First World War, when it was annexed to Italy. He refers to it as, “the Italian hill-tribes” and his bright eyes are teasing, full of laughter. Born in 1945, he grew up speaking Romansch, a language also spoken in parts of Switzerland, rather than Italian. This sense of cul­tural dislocation was one the factors leading Chef Norbert to become a cook.

“I come from a little village in the valley and me having a German name, I just wanted to see the world,” he explains. “At this time it was known that if you became a cook you could see the world, because you could work on a ship, and in different countries.”

There was also the intriguing hotel next to his school, where Chef Norbert and his friends would spy on the cooks. “Once in a while we could see a cake,” he says. His eyes gleam and you get a sense of what cake meant to those children.

A yearning to travel and the sweet promise symbolized in a cake, led Chef Norbert to drop-out of school when he was fifteen to become a chef ’s apprentice, training for three years in Italian and Austrian cuisine. He worked Switzerland for several years, including three winter seasons in St Moritz. His dream was to move to California, but in 1970 an offer to work in the newly opened Dusit Thani Hotel changed his life.

“It was a mystic place,” he says, explaining his limited im­pressions of Thailand at the time. “We didn’t know much more than rice, Queen Sirikit and King Bhumiphol, and that it was close to Vietnam.” After two months in Bangkok, his company wanted to transfer him to California, but it was too late; Chef Norbert had already been seduced by Thailand. As he puts it: “The colours, the food, the way they eat, the way they cook. I loved the pace of life. It was fun. Eve­rything was fun.” After four years at the Dusit Thani, Chef Norbert came to work at The Oriental, becoming Head Chef twenty-eight years ago.

Almost four decades, a Thai wife and two children later, Chef Norbert’s initial passion for Thailand cuisine has yet to dim. His great respect for Thai cooking comes not only from the unique combination of flavours, which he describes as having “the sweet, the sour, the salty and the spiciness, but it is all in harmony.” But also from the Thai tradition of eating together and sharing food, because “in this time of emails no one talks to each other, so it’s even more important that you at least have a conversation at the table. The table is the heart of the home.”

Chef ’s Norbert’s heart is certainly in his adopted home. Of all the famous people he’s served over the years, he unhesi­tatingly confesses that his greatest honour was preparing a banquet to celebrate King Bumiphol’s 60th anniversary on the throne. With the King and 39 Royals at the table, Chef Norbert and his team worked around the clock for the two days leading up to the event, refusing to leave anything to chance. The Oriental had just completed a state-of-the-art kitchen, but even after checking and e-checking all the equipment, Chef Norbert insisted on bringing in all his old equipment in case of an unforeseen technical difficulty.

“This is the excitement. There is a time limit and you have to do it,” he says. “If I’m sweating and dirty and tired but I see my clients are happy, I’m the happiest person in the world.”