Bay area standards will not save city’s food culture

April Zhang says the threat to Hong Kong’s culinary identity stems from a variety of complex factors, which recent official guidelines do not address

Over the past year, we have become more aware of a set of official guidelines on classic Cantonese dishes jointly published by the governments of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau.

This includes standards for 12 Cantonese dishes, six types of Cantonese dim sum and 14 items of Chiu Chow cuisine. The Greater Bay Area standards, which also cover areas such as food safety and hygiene, are intended to ensure the quality and authenticity of Cantonese cuisine and preserve the region’s food heritage.

I cannot say much about Guangdong as a whole, but as far as Hong Kong is concerned, there has definitely been a slow and steady erosion of local food culture. It is right to want to preserve our food culture. However, the threat to the city’s food scene stems from complex factors, which the guidelines do not address.

An article published last year about the challenges facing the city’s yum cha establishments is indicative. Tam Kwok-king, a restaurant business veteran of more than six decades, spoke of a manpower problem: his youngest chef was 60, and he had trouble hiring apprentices. This is not just Tam’s problem; it is an industry-wide issue.

Although Hong Kong’s Chinese Culinary Institute offers training in how to make dim sum, its young graduates tend to then take up jobs in international hotels in pursuit of better benefits and opportunities. Also, these graduates of a standardised system might not acknowledge the old guard, while old-school restaurants prefer to train apprentices themselves.

The conflicting approaches lead to undesirable results: some traditional dim sum offerings are disappearing from Hong Kong’s menus because fewer people can make them, and legacy skills are not being passed down to the next generation.

In the meantime, the city’s older restaurants have been shrinking in number.

The Covid-19 pandemic had a big impact on catering, with thousands of restaurants, including the iconic Jumbo Floating Restaurant, closing.

But even as Hong Kong has emerged from the pandemic, some decades-old establishments have continued to call it quits; Ma Sa, a cha chaan teng in Sheung Wan, recently closed after 50 years in business.

These closures come as tremendous losses to the city. When older restaurants fold, not only do their menu items disappear, but also their unique decor that evoked past eras and brought an invaluable depth to the city’s culinary identity.

None of these restaurants could have been saved by the food guidelines, which, worse, might not go down well with chefs, the very people whose collaboration is vital in preserving food heritage. Some have raised concerns that the extremely detailed instructions handed down by the authorities could stifle creativity and innovation in the kitchen.

They have a point. Cooking is a dynamic art, and each chef usually has their own way of preparing food. Indeed, experimenting with different techniques or ingredients is part and parcel of the trade, and such creativity won’t easily fit inside the box represented by the food guidelines.

Thomas Ng Wing-yan, chairman of the Hong Kong Food Council that helped draft several of the standards, has suggested referring to the Greater Bay Area cooking guidelines as one would to cookbooks or travel magazines.

While the standards aren’t even on the radar of many chefs in Hong Kong, they could indeed help spread the fine points of Cantonese cuisine to a wider audience – the many individuals who enjoy cooking at home. But in this case, these instructions should be made easier for ordinary folk to follow.

I often watch cookery shows and look for recipes either online or from cookbooks to try at home. Compared to these sources, however, the Greater Bay Area cooking guidelines are beyond my capability, requiring skills I simply do not have. I doubt I am an exception.

Take, for example, the standard for char siu bao, or steamed buns filled with barbecued pork. It specifies the roasted pork belly must be cut into 3mm pieces as thin as “fingernail slices”. As another example, there are nine pages of instructions on how to boil prawns to perfection. Such exact guidelines can hardly serve as handy references for home cooks. Instead, they feel forbidding, and are more likely to discourage people from attempting these dishes at home.

Although the guidelines were set down with good intentions, they might do little for local food culture and heritage. Let’s hope the government can take more effective measures, and soon.