Celebrity chef and Thai Culinary Ambassador Jet Tila is known both for his local Melting Pot tours and his visionary ways. He's famed for testing foodie boundaries, pushing edible envelopes in all the right ways, and going for world records.
The culinary ambassador had broken a few records prior to this past Labor Day Weekend -- the world's largest stir fry, the world's largest seafood stew, and the world's largest California roll -- but now another sweet milestone can be added to his ribbon wall: world's largest fruit salad. The University of Massachusetts at Amherst pitched in on the 15,291-pound dish over the holiday, a dish so large only a swimming pool could hold it.
Over 20 varieties of apples alone were in the mix. And the melon varieties? There were 19 in all.
Think of that next time you skip that last piece of honeydew at the bottle of the bowl.
Chef Tila will also soon be at the helm of our city's inaugural Thai Food Fest, an event which looks to be quite large indeed.
What will be served? Fruits will be in the dishes, yes, though not in world-record-breaking form. Rather, consider the five tastes of Thai food, flavors much associated with the signature specialties. While some foodies might say they prefer bitter over sweet, so many dishes tend to incorporate the quintet in beautiful and savory concert.
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Sunday, Sept. 29 will be the day for those flavors -- spicy, sweet, sour, salty, and bitter -- to shine in a large-scale, studio-based way.
One hopes Chef Tila might don his toque at the Paramount Studios culinary party, but there will be much to see and do beyond the eating (and there will be plenty of that, so mmm). Culinary panels and demos and talks and food and drink tastings dot the afternoon's to-do list.
And the food? Look for delicacies such at Golden Pouches, pineapple fried rice, and salads like green papaya will be on the plates.
Not on the plates? A number of delightful activities, from umbrella painting to live tunes.
No fruit salad has been mentioned, nor any world record attempts, but Chef Tila always has something delightful and surprising up his chef-wear sleeves. A day out at a Hollywood studio enjoying really good food definitely qualifies as delightful and surprising.
