What do you get when you put together an experimental chef and a self-styled mood therapist? Something explosive. Words by Nick Ross . Photos by Vu Bao Khanh

At the start of September, photos circulated around the Hanoi online ether of two men dressed up in nuclear reactor-style protective clothing. Surrounded by smoke and with a large canister of liquid nitrogen in the background, the men were compared by some to characters in the TV series, Breaking Bad. But these were no former high-school chemistry teachers, no Walter Whites. Instead, the man in the glasses is the chef de cuisine of the JW Marriott, Raphael Szurek, and the guy with the Fidel Castro-like beard is Richard McDonough, a modernist cocktail maker or, as he likes to call himself, a mood therapist. Together they were teaming up to create probably the most unusual dinner ever seen in Vietnam — Molecular Night The Mood Therapist McDonough’s interest in scientifically created cocktails started when he did a stint as a “trailing spouse” living in Ghana. His wife was working on an aid project, which left him with a lot of time on his hands. “I was growing my own vegetables, raising chickens and using the eggs,” he explains. “And I was cooking and putting on dinner parties.”

With the cooking came the idea of playing with the flavours and the cuisine. That led to listening to a podcast called Cooking Issues, and then onto reading a book called Modernist Cuisine at Home. Eventually, the food idea became unwieldy and he switched to drinks. “When I came back to Hanoi, everyone was, like, ‘you should open a bar’.” His first attempt was at this year’s ASEAN Pride Festival at The American Club, where a friend hired him to do the VIP bar. “It was four different cocktails, but I pumped out 200 drinks in the evening,” he says. “One of the directors from Christian Dior was there and he got in touch with me at the end of July. I invited him round to see my lab and its weird collection of machinery. He came over on the Friday afternoon and the following Tuesday he flew me down to Ho Chi Minh City to do the first event for them.” From there he met the brand director of Moët Hennessy — he’s now working on a project with them. After that, Raphael got in touch and suggested the idea of working together at the JW Marriott. The dinner they created ran for three Saturdays in September.