Summer Cooking Camp

Flying Culinary Circus Lands in L.A.
By Gerry Furth-Sides

It's a bird, it's a plane, it's a rock band. No, it's the fabulously great looking Flying Culinary Circus! Compacting as much energy as a full blown classic big-tent troupe the four chefs appear tumultuous yet they are as planned a bundle of energy as you can pack into one kitchen.

The dynamic artists will be returning to the Los Angeles area May 2- May 28, and can be booked for privates parties. As mind boggling as their antics and delicious food may be, the guys themselves treat each guest as though they were the only one in the room, as I myself can vouch.

And "gourmet" and "artists" are key words in describing the group. Each chef possesses a special personal passion. Mathias Bugge Oien is a sauce and soup expert. His claim to fame is as chef of Norway¹s most popular restaurant by vote, Bagatelle, from 2003 to 2005. Trond Svendgard, a fish and shellfish expert, won gold in the Chef Olympics and owns three successful restaurants. Tor Jorgen Kramprud Arnesen focuses on herbs and vegetables with experience at Norway¹s most exclusive resort, The Per Gynt farm. Hans Kristian Larsen¹s passion is meat. He was the chef at Mel Gibson¹s restaurant between 2000 and 2002, traveled as a chef through Thailand and Australia for a year, and also worked at Bagatelle.

Flying Culinary Circus food is universally appealing and straightforward. "We're inspired by local cuisine wherever we go, but we try to make it our own,' Svendgard explained, as the group on one occasion offered up a sumptuous finger-food menu that covered the range of sumptuous fare from, Santa Barbara shrimps, tuna sashimi with apple and wasabi sorbet, foie gras and quail.

Astonishingly, as evident by their names, this perpetual motion machine is brought to us by Norway, that vast land usually equated with serenity and snow (although Norway is well known to be ranked number one in the world for design, along with Italy).

The inspiration behind The Flying Culinary Circus started with a VIP dinner at the opening of ³Per Gynt² in Central Park, New York in 2005. The combination of their culinary talents, showmanship and enormous charisma won the high-profile and well connected guests over from the appetizer course. Guest, Bebe clothing founder Manny Mashouf, made immediate arrangements to fly the chefs out to L.A. to cater an event in his home. The team has been working literally non-stop ever since, cooking for such celebrities as Oprah Winfrey, Michael Jackson and Kevin Costner on a perpetual world tour.

International guests of globe-trotting Flying Culinary Circus have included intimate friends' gatherings to the royal families of the UK, Spain and Norway at Buckingham Palace, celebrity appearances in Hollywood and Kuala Lumpur, oil sheiks and students at their annual gourmet cooking courses in Tuscany, Italy.

Some examples of the Flying Culinary Circus' dramatic doings:

• Flying in with a parachute and preparing the food right after landing
• Making ice cream out of fresh fruit with liquid nitrogen, they call "the world's freshest ice cream bar" (see picture here)
• Arriving at an event straight out of the sea and preparing alive scallops
• Flaming food with a giant asphalt torch and setting a chef on fire
  

With an unfailing sense of humor, next on their list of new kitchen products are bandages! As they put it, "We have traveled around the world and we always get irritated of bandages that doesn't stick properly or feel good to wear. Oh yes, even professional chefs cut themselves. So, don't worry about any accidents in the future."

To help prevent such accidents, in conjunction with the best lamp producer in Scandinavia, Northern Lighting, FCC, they are developing a Flying Culinary Circus lamp with "perfect adjustable working light and a mood making shade," plus a useful clip that holds recipes at eye level.

Their site for details, tour and booking information: www.fccircus.com/forside.html

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