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Chefs Turn Fruit, Veggies Into Art

LAS VEGAS, Nevada –Aug. 9, 2000 --Those of us who dine at buffets on the Strip, or attend food events such as the Gourmet Games, have probably been dazzled by the intricate fruit-and- vegetable carvings that embellish displays and trays of food in those venues.

There's a story behind this art form, which centers around a trio of local Thai women chefs. Their names are Boonme Polak, Jerapa Hendricks and Ann Vongchanglaw. All three have interesting stories to tell.

This art form isn't unique to Thailand, but it has evolved there and is now practiced there on an extremely high level. It was originally practiced in the kitchens of the Royal Thai court, where privileged Thai families had edibles such as mangoes, papayas, watermelons, turnips, beets and squashes carved into wondrous shapes depicting flowers, birds and dragons.

Eventually fruit-and-vegetable carving spread throughout that country, to the point where it is now taught in most grade schools. Though the art form is not religious based, many Thais offer their creations to Buddhist monks.

Polak, a stunning woman known as "Well" to her colleagues, works exclusively for the Riviera hotel-casino's Ristorante Italiano, where she creates carvings for the dessert cart and for private parties. Interestingly, the Chef Garde-Manger for the hotel, Conrado Manganti, helped train her.

But Polak insists that she is mainly self-taught, as do the two other women profiled here. Looking at her creations -- artichoke hearts magically transmuted into roses and pieces of honeydew melon transformed into flower petals -- one is hard pressed to imagine how.

She modestly admits that what the really accomplished Thai fruit-and-vegetable artists do is beyond her abilities.

But Ristorante Italiano's Manager David Gross is proud of what he calls her "excellent work," and confides that she also makes a mean Caesar salad, all part of a day's work for this charming, personable artist.

It's quite a bit different over at the Tropicana hotel-casino, where there are two Thai women doing similar work. These two are, one could say, competitors. The rapport between the two is distinctly minimal.

Ann Vongchanglaw wears two hats professionally. In addition to what she does for Tropicana, she also works at Mandalay Bay hotel-casino, where she does chef's carvings for VIP parties and fruit-and-vegetable trays for the high-roller Baccarat Room. Vongchanglaw is a fast, serious and efficient woman. She was a nurse in Thailand before arriving in Las Vegas four years ago.

"I love flowers," she says, "but I wasn't interested in carving until I came to this country."

No one hired her, so she went to a trade school where she was trained by a chef named Madero, who showed her pictures of flower arrangements and taught her the rudiments of carving..

Her work is beautiful -- pieces of mango carved into the shape of leaves, various vegetables in the shape of flowers and birds, a bouquet of mock roses made completely from watermelon.

She also credits Laotian chef Chanh Boupha of Bally's hotel-casino as a mentor. "He helped me a lot," she says. "I'll carve anything," she add, before departing abruptly, "apples, beets, just give them to me."

The easygoing Jerapa Hendricks also plies her trade at the Tropicana on a part-time basis. She came to the United States at a college student, attending Arizona State University in Tempe. It was there she met her American husband and, in her own words, "broke her family's heart by marrying a man who was not a Thai.

After living in North Carolina for 18 years, where she owned a French restaurant in Wilmington called Le Petite Chateau, she decided to retire and move back to Thailand. "I couldn't stand it," she says. "I didn't have to lift a finger and it was so boring I decided to move back to the States."

It was in her native country that she signed up for classes to learn the basic of fruit-and-vegetable carving, which she is still perfecting. Upon her return she worked as a garde-manger at the Monte Carlo hotel-casino before signing on at the Tropicana.

Some of the things she's done are quite impressive. She carved the logo of the Tropicana into the outer rind of a watermelon for a recent food event, and also carved two lovebirds, side-by-side, into that fruit's pink flesh.

It's all quite amazing.

It's even more amazing that three Thai women have made fruits and vegetables into an aesthetic landscape in Las Vegas.

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