A dinner that's also a play at Michelin-starred Nouri, where chef Ivan Brehm turns actor as you eat

Restaurant Nouri and Checkpoint Theatre have joined forces to create what is probably Singapore's first true fusion of fine dining and theatre. The 10-course, three-hour experience pairs each course with a chapter from chef Ivan Brehm's personal journey.

Nouri’s chef Ivan Brehm has undoubtedly heard the adage “don’t play with your food”, but has explicitly chosen to contravene it.

His latest adventurous project at Restaurant Nouri, undertaken in collaboration with Checkpoint Theatre, threads a play scripted by the theatre company’s joint artistic director Huzir Sulaiman through a 10-course meal (S$348++ per person), serving up fine dining with several sides of theatre – or, is it the other way around?

In fact, it’s neither, but aims to be its own whole new, boundary-breaking thing: As far as we know, no fine dining restaurant in Singapore has ever collaborated with a theatre company in a manner such as this, Huzir said.

The 10-act play, titled A Matter Of Taste and running until Aug 30, chronicles the story of Brehm’s life, with each act corresponding to a dish and a particular stage of his journey as a chef. Diners take in each segment of the performance, and are then served an individual course to the accompaniment of a specially chosen soundtrack, engaging the senses on several levels to create a transportive experience.

To be clear, this isn’t “dinner theatre”, known more for its kitschy entertainment value than for the food. There are no props, costumes, audience-interaction bits or song-and-dance numbers. Instead, it feels more like an intimate chat in which Brehm is reading his own biography out loud to you in the midst of the actual dinner service taking place in the restaurant’s open kitchen. There is one other actor, Ramzie Tahar, who gives voice to the other people in Brehm’s stories, but also pitches in to help with the very un-abstract task of prepping food for guests.

Diners get to taste, for example, an interpretation of the “orange soup” that Brehm describes discovering as a young child that first opened his eyes to culinary possibilities. While the original dish had been a dessert, this one is served as an opening course comprising savoury vanilla rice custard, bafun uni and muscat vinegar. Like many children, he hated soup, Brehm told us. “Then I ordered the dessert, and it was just marvellous. I was very young, and it was the first time that I realised that food had that potential.”

Then there’s a shepherd’s pie and buffalo wings course, into which memories of his culinary school days in the US are condensed; an agnolotti dish that encapsulates his time working at a restaurant in rural Italy; and more.

Chefs are always building dishes around their memories, of course, but the task of communicating the backstory to the diner usually falls either on the server or on the menu, and in both cases, the spiel must be brief. Here, the vignettes unfold over a luxurious three hours.

What was the initial reaction when Brehm announced he was doing a play about his life? “Everybody was a bit shocked, but also they know we're a bit crazy,” he smiled. “We like this multi-modal thing – collaboration with artists, designers. Initially, we were talking about doing scripts about other things, and it was Huzir’s pitch to do a story based on my life. I had shared some things with him in the past, but I never, for a second, imagined that we're going to do a play about me.”

Hardcore foodies will relish the stories the most, as the play details Brehm’s experiences working in some of the world’s most acclaimed restaurants including Per Se in the US, Fat Duck in the UK and Mugaritz in Spain – as well as some of the most abusive kitchens, too.

But, even if you’re not invested in the formative years of a Brazilian chef who later went on to clinch his own Michelin star, the play “could be about anybody, not just me. Everybody has gone through tough moments. Everybody has had to fight through something. Everybody has had to accept hell,” Brehm said.

Now halfway into its run, the production has “taught me so much”, including “how difficult acting is”, Brehm said. But, “the coolest thing, to me, and what theatre and Huzir specifically have managed to show me, is that you can revisit your memories and decide how you feel about them at a later stage.”

Huzir revealed that reactions to the play have surprised him. “To be blunt, I know it's a good show, but I didn't expect how much it's affected people,” he told us. “We’ve had people laughing, and in tears. Just last night, the people at Table 11 said, ‘This is the best experience of our life’.

"I think the lovely thing about culinary art is that it goes into your body. When we do theater, it's eyes and ears.” With this, “It nourishes you, like ‘Nouri’.”

Theatre may be an art form, but food isn’t always, Brehm said. “I think food is craft most of the time – very technical craft. But, I think, when you start to cook and question things and put meaning and decisions into what you make, that food can be artistic. And, to be able to take that a step further, and take another art form and see if the product is greater than the sum of its parts – if you can make artwork that stands for something – it’s fascinating and thrilling.”

He added: “If you think about it, everything a chef touches, everything he prepares or she cuts – all of those things end up in somebody’s stomach. You could not be more intimate with somebody than in an environment like this. It’s a beautiful but also very sensitive job that I sometimes feel we don’t take as seriously as we should, as chefs.

"Obviously, tonight, people are hearing stories that are deeply personal to me, but to cook for someone is really an act of devotion, of love, of intimacy – and respecting that, I think, is what makes food so amazing.”

A Matter Of Taste runs until Aug 30 at Nouri, 72 Amoy Street. For more information, visit nouri.com.sg/reservations/.