KITCHEN ARTIST

It takes a chef who isn’t only well informed, but also open-minded to be capable of demonstrating convincingly that haute cuisine can be a nonchalant affair too. Raymond Tham, the go-to chef of gastronomers and essentially anyone who enjoys the finer things in life, is one of them. So, what lies behind his success?.

- John Ng

“Are you ready?” I jokingly ask after catching Raymond Tham’s attention at Beta KL. “I’m Googling who BTS is that you have in your questions right now,” he replies, laughing.

Tham, co-owner and executive chef of Skillet @ 163 and Beta KL, has known that he wanted to become a chef since he was six years old, which explains his profound sense of creativity and innovation in culinary. “I started cooking with my grandmother and mother,” he says. Tham shared how he was particularly intrigued by the fruits and vegetables his grandmother grew in her backyard garden. “I remembered wondering why the freshly plucked baby cucumbers on the vine tasted so good and that was kind of when my appreciation of fine flavours started.”