Ooh Baby. Baby. It’s a Wild World
Perceptive, worldly-wise and brutally blunt, chef, gardener and forager Bleu Dorji sure does have a knack for dish- ing out amazing food from simple, local ingredients.
Bleu Dorji refuses, as far as food is concerned, to conform to the usual fare. She never has. Not as an apprentice working for an over the top, swanky French restaurant in Singapore, and certainly not now, as a chef, gardener, forager, interior designer and the brains behind Orog Travel’s bespoke culinary tours.
“I’ve already done the standard (what is expected of you) routine in my time as a trainee abroad and now I want to give my own twist to the food I prepare,” she quips.
Sliding into her outdoor boots, and heading into the forest in search of wild edibles to include in the dishes she’s preparing for her guests tonight, Bleu will take a good few hours to comb the local woods in search of chanterelles or sisi shamu as its called in Bhutan.
“I really just got into foraging because of my mum. As a kid, I’d love to wander in the woods with her to collect mushrooms, wild herbs, berries and all sorts of things,” she says mat- ter-of-factly. “Over the years, I started looking around and began finding more and more ingredients and, before I realized it, I was going out with books to identify all that I was tugging at and gathering.”
Bleu has just one unbending rule though when it comes to foraging – never pick anything unless you are absolutely certain of their identity. So, despite her extensive experience, she still triple checks her books before harvesting any wild edibles. “It is simply satisfying to find your ingredients in the woods or pluck them from your garden. It just makes the dish that much better. Simple dishes without a doubt let all the wild ingredients come through with their natural flavors,” she says enthusias-tically.
The eldest of two siblings, Bleu grew up on the outskirts of Thimphu, surrounded by lush green woods and a river running gently through it. And alongside her mother, it was her maternal grandfather who influenced her greatly to take up outdoor pursuits.
“He was the most adventurous person I’ve ever known, and the most loving,” she says, reminiscing the times she’d tag along with him on his hunting and fishing expeditions. “It is because of him and my mum that I developed a taste for fresh food, and my love for cooking and being in the open air.”
Her poise and manner, and the way she can hold her own suggest an aristocratic pedigree. And rightly so. She is of noble ancestry on both sides of her parents. Yet, despite all the perks that come with being associated with aristocracy – like owning a home in a different country, or traveling frequently to exotic, far-away destinations and hobnobbing with the who’s who in affluent circles – Bleu’s got her feet planted firmly on the ground. She’s unpretentious, hard working, wears her heart on her sleeve, and is sympathetic and supportive to causes that pull at her heartstrings, like volunteering her time and energy for improving the plight of stray dogs in and around the capital for instance.
She freely admits that her career is, for many people, a fantasy. But it took some doing to get her place – The Secret Garden – a bespoke restaurant up and running. She was hesitant at first but eventually set up the place, right after the pandemic. All she wanted initially was to host friends and family there. But, no sooner had she opened it, word got around and people started coming out of curiosity and then coming back for the food. Today, her clientele is a varied mix.
“I wouldn’t have started the restaurant had it not been for the encouragement of my dad,” she professes. “Looking back, I am happy I did because it helps me keep my sanity intact and offers me a creative outlet. More over, I have developed a lot of interesting recipes that you wont find anywhere else, and for that, I am extremely grateful to my dad for nudging me to take that enormous leap of faith.”
She adds that everything she does is bespoke. “I look at what my clients enjoy and the kind of food experience they want to indulge in, only then do I come up with a menu,” she explains. “The feedback I get is usually excellent. But I don’t fall for that kind of nonsense. What I look at instead is whether they come back and bring others along for another gastronomic experience that is unlike any other. And they do.”
Inspiring people to take ownership of what they eat has been a genuine passion for the 25-year-old chef from the very outset. While youngsters her age today are happy eating fish and chips or hot dogs and hamburgers, Bleu is showing them how local Bhutanese cuisines can be prepped differently to transform them from being bland to delectable meals.
Looking at Bleu’s passion for the outdoors, skill in the kitchen, and her creativity insofar as food and decor is concerned, Orog Travel pursued her relentlessly to get her on board. She finally relented and is currently the company’s culinary advisor.
“I want my guests to get exactly what they come for, so it’s important for me to not overlook even the minutest detail. I want them to experience our country and our culture through the food we prepare and serve,” she says. We, at Orog, couldn’t agree more.
When Bleu tells her story, she makes it sound as if culinary success were something that she stumbled into; in fact, the truth is quite the contrary. She spent years learning, working and mastering her way into the kitchen. Just the way it’s supposed to be done.