Taste of Asia is born again; taste OF THE NORTH EAST Newcastle's first Pan-Asian restaurant, Barn Asia, has an impeccable food lineage to fall back on. Jane Hall speaks to the man behind the venture, Mark Lagun.
Byline: Jane HallRESTAURANTEUR Mark Lagun has a new addition to his family.
It was late arriving and at just a few days old, is giving the 45-year-old sleepless nights. There have been the inevitable teething problems, tears and tantrums too.
Having been down this road three times before, he knew what he was letting himself in for. But this new baby is proving to be a demanding soul. At barely a week old it is putting Mark's nurturing instincts to the test.
There is light at the end of the tunnel, however. And all the signs point to Mark's latest offspring enjoying as bright and fulfilling a future as its illustrious forbears.
Certainly it's pedigree is impeccable. Great-grandfather was an eccentric trailblazer whose name still brings a fond smile to the faces of Tynesiders. Granddad, meanwhile, was an altogether larger and more contemporary fellow who ploughed his own furrow with no less success. Dad turned out to be a kitsch but cool individual with more than a hint of Eastern promise. Now Junior is destined to cement his father's East-West relations and win the family a new army of admirers.
'Junior' is Newcastle's first Pan-Asian restaurant. The clue to its distinguished heritage is in its name: Barn Asia.
It is the fourth generation to bear the now famous 'Barn' moniker. The great-grand sire was the tongue-in-cheek Barn Again bistro on Newcastle's Leazes Park Road. This was followed by Barn@thebiscuit housed within Newcastle's contemporary Biscuit Factory art gallery. The third generation was the humorously named but none-the-less grown-up Barn Under a Wandering Star in Jesmond, which closed earlier this summer.
Housed in a parade of shops under a multi-storey car park in the new Waterloo Square development by Newcastle's Dance City, kicking and screaming don't quite sum-up the problems Mark has faced in bringing Barn Asia into the world. Top of the list has been that the opening had to be delayed as the seemingly endless wet weather that has thus far passed for our summer, had an unexpected and unwelcome effect on building work.
"The plan was for Barn Under a Wandering Star to close six weeks ago and Barn Asia to open," Mark explains wearily. "There wasn't supposed to be a six-week gap, but we have had real problems with this building, not least discovering that with all the rain we have been having, it was leaking terribly. We are under a car park and the rain was pouring down the lift shaft and into the restaurant.
"Finger's crossed we have got that sorted now and eventually opened last weekend. All I can say is that thank God it rained so heavily when it did and we found out the problem was there. If it had happened after we had opened...."
Mark doesn't bother to finish the sentence. He doesn't need to. He sits quietly for a few seconds, no doubt mentally calculating not only the financial implications of such a disaster, but the effects it would have had on customer goodwill and his blood pressure.
While the rest of us lament the passing of what should be a temperate English summer, however, it has to be said that the monsoon-style rains and accompanying humidity we have been enduring add a certain authenticity to running a Pan-Asian restaurant.
The look on Mark's face suggests he could have done without this touch of real-life drama.
Time to talk food then, and to find out why Mark has suddenly decided to move away from the bistro-style he became famous for and embrace the cuisines of French-influenced Vietnam and its near Far Eastern neighbours Cambodia, Thailand, China, Japan, Malaysia and Indonesia.
"It isn't a sudden move," Mark clarifies. "This is the 15th year of the Barn brand, but for the last five of those we have had a lot of South-East Asian dishes on the menu. Brian James, who is my head chef, likes that sort of cuisine. I have a passion for travel, especially in South-East Asia, and I've always loved that cuisine too. It seemed a natural progression to open a restaurant specialising in just Pan-Asian food."
The menu offers a mix of small dishes, Asian-style tapas, curries and barbecued food. Diners can enjoy imaginative meals such as Thai-style sweet potato soup, fried salted duck egg with Asian mushrooms, oyster sauce and prickly ash, or mussels with Tiger beer and chilli jam.
Other offerings include lemongrass skewered king prawns, bang bang chicken, and Mark's personal favourites, a range of Singapore laksa curries - not a curry in the sense that we have come to understand them with rice and sauce, but in fact a spicy soup with noodles.
The menu is largely of Brian's choosing. "Brian is a fantastically dedicated chef," Mark enthuses. "I have known him a long time. He was with me for the first couple of years and then went to Australia with his wife and kids. I lured him back.
"He's been with me for about 12 of the 15 years I have owned restaurants.
"His wife was talking to me at Barn Asia's preview night and revealed the degree to which Brian has been burning the midnight oil coming up with new ideas and expanding his knowledge."
It is to be hoped that Brian's efforts aren't wasted. Mark has thus far shown an uncanny aptitude for gauging the public's appetite for his particular brand of imaginatively prepared contemporary cuisine served in eclectic surroundings. But is Newcastle ready for its first Pan-Asian eaterie? Mark believes so, otherwise he wouldn't have sunk his money - and reputation - into Barn Asia.
"People in the UK have become much more interested beyond their own boundaries of what they would originally eat from elsewhere," he says.
"People have been eating Chinese for many years and latterly they are eating Thai food and it is a natural progression to look instead to places like Vietnam and Cambodia.
"I certainly think there is a large appreciation of this style of food around here. Initially it is the spiciness and fragrance of Indian and Chinese, and then you get the subtle flavours of Vietnam. It's the whole experience of these different tastes; the different nuances."
Barn Asia is no whim. And it's not an attempt to pass-off on the public a watered down version of the next big foodie trend. Mark has travelled to South-East Asia with his chef, researching dishes and buying memorabilia - including many pieces of original Communist-era Vietnamese propaganda art - which he has shipped back to Newcastle to give Barn Asia a genuine feel.
That's not to say that the food is a slave to authenticity. "You will always have someone who comes along and says it's not like my grandmother could make it in downtown Hanoi. It's a modern British infusion. We aren't looking at correctly taking the exact style of how it is produced in Vietnam.
Bit by bit the style will change so it is a reflection of South-East Asian food.
"We are toning things down for an English palette, but it is as genuine as we think we can get it. There are no short cuts. Every paste is produced 100% from scratch."
He adds: "I am a great believer in restaurants being a unique experience, that you shouldn't be able to go to cities around the world and see the same places everywhere you go. I'd like to think that every restaurant I've ever been involved with hasn't ever compromised on quality and that Barn Asia will be as popular as all my other venues have been."
Apart from introducing diners to Pan-Asian, Mark is also on a mission to make tea drinking fashionable again.
To this end he is offering a range of speciality teas alongside the extensive wine menu, including lotus blossom which he brought back from Vietnam.
A glass teapot contains hot water with what looks like a brown, dried up flower head floating in it. The blossom slowly opens to produce a wonderfully fragrant tea.
"Barn Asia's food is well suited to tea drinking," Mark says. And with that, he raises his white china cup to Barn Asia's success.
Barn Asia, Waterloo Square, Newcastle, (0191) 221-1000.
CAPTION(S):
IT'S THE TALK OF THE TOWN: Barn Asia opening night in Waterloo Square, Newcastle. Picture: Emily Barber www.icNewcastle.co.uk/buyaphoto ref: 00960927; FLAMING HECK! Head chef Brian James in action.
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| Title Annotation: | Features |
|---|---|
| Publication: | The Journal (Newcastle, England) |
| Date: | Jul 20, 2007 |
| Words: | 1399 |
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