Tatler Dining Guide - Hong Kong
CHEFS’ NIGHT OUT
What do Hong Kong’s brightest young talents get up to after hours?
Several of the city’s kitchen mavericks chat with Wilson Fok over beers, late-night bites and a good time after service
Fluorescent lighting flashes across the square dining space, with thumping tunes courtesy of a live DJ as the resident bartender juggles bottles, at each corner of the bar turning out Chinese-inspired cocktails. Such is the raucous setting at Happy Paradise’s inaugural supper event, titled Friends Forever – an event dedicated to late supper, where chefs gather after service over good food, drinks and killer ambience. Leading the kitchen brigade for this special night are Happy Paradise’s own May Chow and resident frontman John Javier, together with a guest appearance by Taku Sekine, visiting from Paris. Together, the three have designed a wicked one-night-only menu.
At midnight sharp, they begin to enter: Bao La, Jowett Yu and Daniel Calvert, the head chefs at Le Garçon Saigon, Ho Lee Fook and Belon, respectively. The trio are regulars at this Soho hotspot; between handshakes and hugs, they’ve made themselves at home. Soon, more chefs sit themselves down around the trio of chefs as the drinks start flowing amid showers of appetisers and small bites. “We really do enjoy going out after work,” says Bao, between several mouthfuls of noodles. “By the time we finish service, we’re normally quite famished. And when we go out, eating always comes first. It comes way before we start drinking for real.”
For Bao, who started working at Le Garçon Saigon about two years ago, it was all about keeping the party small and personal. The young chef has a particular schedule when it comes to partying after work. “I’m mostly a private homebody after work—some people call me a loner, but I call it being rather private outside of work,” he explains. “I think it’s safe to say that I don’t go out every night after work, which usually means heading home, having one or two beers and chilling, sometimes watching a movie or two. It’s not as exciting as what most people think we do after work.”
With a heavy workload at Le Garçon Saigon, as well as the recently opened Le Petit Saigon, the restaurant’s sandwich outlet next door, the Vietnamese native still finds time to go out and hang out with his kitchen brothers and sisters. “We all have
different schedules, but we try to find a common time every now and then for a special night out—a sort of event-ofthe-month where Jowett, Daniel and I, sometimes with Yardbird’s Jeff Claudio,” explains Bao. “We’re in a favourite hangout marathon, starting with dai pai dong, followed by karaoke and Ichiran ramen to end the night.” “Oh yes, karaoke is definitely in our blood,” interjects Daniel. “When we go out, we go out—we normally forget about restaurant matters. This is the only time we can hang out and forget about the duties that give us stress. When we de-stress, we forget all about work.”
Chefs like these three have become ambassadors of the younger generation of F&B. As frequently happens, when out-of-town chefs visit Hong Kong, they look for the trio— together with May Chow of Happy Paradise, Little Bao and Second Draft—for a wild night of fun eating. “When chefs visit Hong Kong, of course they’ll plan their own meals. They visit Amber, Mott 32 and Lung King Heen, and even Yardbird—the kind of restaurants that have made it big internationally,” says Jowett. “What we can do, on top of their fine-dining experiences, is show them what kind of city Hong Kong is according to how we experience it. It isn’t often that outsiders get to see the more local side of Hong Kong in terms of food. We could go to an old place like Luk Yu or Lin Heung teahouse for yum cha, or the noodle shops in Sham Shui Po. There are places you can only do in the wee hours of the evening. And in the process of our guests learning more about Hong Kong, we get to revisit these places and have a good time, too.”
It’s time to hit the second spot. From the bustling hotspot of Happy Paradise, we head to a pseudo-secret Japanese izakaya, located in a commercial building in Causeway
Bay. The dimly lit lift takes us up and we enter through a wooden door partially covered with a noren (door curtain). The entrance reveals a modest restaurant, with a Japanese wooden bar in the centre and an open kitchen lined with sakes and whiskies. This is Hidden, best known for highballs and kushiage (deep-fried skewers). Hidden is also a favourite hangout among the city’s fine-dining chefs, including the likes of Neighborhood’s David Lai and Ta Vie’s Hideaki Sato. On any given night, there’s at least a chef or two sitting along the bar, chatting over beers—and on the evening of our visit, we spotted five: Vea’s Vicky Cheng, Cô Thành’s Son Pham, Haku’s Agustin Balbi, Frantzén’s Kitchen’s Jim Löfdahl and Petrus’ Ricardo Chaneton.
Before Hidden’s skewer set menu commences, the chefs are delighted to open up about their late-night hangout stories.
“We sure don’t look like a group of chefs who would hang out together,” admits Son Pham. “I work in a Vietnamese noodle shop, Ricardo at a hotel, and the rest of them are on the finer side of cuisine. I usually finish work quite early—I’m done at around 9 or 10 in the evening— but these guys sometimes don’t finish until midnight or even later.” The five chefs all know each other from
“When [other] chefs visit, what we can do is show them what kind of city Hong Kong is according to how we experience it. It isn’t often that outsiders get to see the more local side of Hong Kong in terms of food.”
—Jowett Yu
PARTICIPATING CHEFS
Ricardo Chaneton (Petrus), Jim Löfdahl (Frantzén’s Kitchen), Agustin Balbi (Haku), Son Pham
(Cô Thành), and Vicky Cheng (Vea)
events and their shared passion of cuisine has brought them together. Having all worked in fine-dining circles and having undergone classical training, they also have somewhat similar preferences in terms of hanging out after service. “As chefs who are adventurous in the kitchen, we’re definitely some of the most boring when it comes to choices for going out at night,” continues Son. “We don’t try new places unless we absolutely have to—and that doesn’t come by very easily or very often.”
Every day, chefs spend an extended period of time managing their kitchens, including service havoc. At the end of service, sometimes these restaurant mavericks want nothing more than simple treats that require little risk. “I used to go out every night back when I was working in New York and Tokyo,” says Son. “But it’s important to set some ground rules for yourself. First, you must never mix drinks. When you go out, you want to have a good time. But when you mix drinks, you’re asking for a bad time immediately, guaranteed! If you drink beer, you can have as many beers as you can handle—same for wines or spirits—but stick with just one type.”
For Vicky Cheng, going out means a lot more than its social nature belies. As the executive chef of fine-dining establishment Vea, Vicky takes his professionalism beyond the kitchen. “My kitchen is my family and it’s our Vea tradition to spend one Saturday night each month having a restaurant after-service gathering,” he says. “It’s as much a focus group for our staff as it is a fun event. At first, we thought nobody would want to hang out with the boss. But as each month’s event went from karaoke to dai pai dong, and to hot pot and a house party on location at Vea, it turned out that we could spend time together beyond the daily operations. It’s the crucial time where we can learn about members of our family and solve problems that they sometimes have difficulty bringing up at work.”
When it comes to hanging out with his peers, Vicky is equally open to the idea. “When chefs hang out, you’d think we always come up with kitchen problems to solve. On the contrary, we rarely talk about what goes on inside the kitchen. We chat about where to eat around the world, share our travel stories and what not to eat. Hanging out with chefs is a good opportunity to know what’s going on beyond the kitchen, where we spend so many hours of our lives.” As the jovial chefs dive head-first into each deep-fried skewer, downing them with ice-cold beers and clinking glasses across the bar, their thoughts of daytime business somehow dissipate amid their cheers (and occasionally crude humour). One thing’s for sure: as stressful as the kitchen gets, you’ll probably want more than one beer to unwind.
The hot summer night next takes us to a tiny, bustling Chinese restaurant in Prince Edward. At Ju Xing Home, with its modest spread of three eight-top round tables and three four-tops, large groups of diners clink glasses over a table spread of banquet dishes—prawns with soy sauce, Mandarin fish pot with pickled mustard greens, fish in a Sichuan-style hot broth, stir-fried noodles with soy sauce, and a lot more. The barely set table is packed with guests
squishing themselves in to make the party, each grabbing a glass of beer for cheers amid lively conversations. Known to most as just an ordinary Cantonese restaurant, Ju Xing Home is the late-night hangout for some of the city’s top local chefs, including pastry guru Ringo Chan of the Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, together with his dessert comrades Roger Fok of the Renaissance Harbour View Hotel and Baking Channel owner Ken Lee.
“I was brought here by Chan Yan-tak, our Lung King Heen master chef, as well as former Caprice chef Vincent Thierry,” recalls Ringo. “Back in the day we would hang out until really late, mixing drinks and getting really hammered—and we would head back to the hotel to sleep it off in the locker room… Make that three times a week.” However, more than two decades in the business later, Ringo has other priorities today: a family and even more responsibilities on the job. As the executive pastry chef of the Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, his job involves dealing with a lot more than just baking bread, such as managing the pastry kitchen. “When you have more priorities, you stop and think about them first. I must say, I have grown beyond getting completely drunk.”
As part of the Hong Kong culinary team for the World Chefs association, Ringo, like his buddies Roger and Ken, take their get-togethers as more than just a time to hang out and de-stress. “It’s also our strategising meeting, too,” says Roger. “We sit down over a beer or two, slowly downing them between bites, and exchange ideas on how we can prepare for the competitions ahead, or talk about revising what we did wrong and what we can do to get better.”
Together, the trio has taken turns choosing these nightout hotspots. Ringo’s the de facto leader, organising and gathering the crowd, while the rest suggest places and occasionally find new spots from their outings with other groups of chefs. “We usually go with Chinese food at this hour—around the Bowrington Street Market in Causeway Bay and occasionally along Lockhart Road, too,” says Roger. “When we meet in Kowloon, Prince Edward and Sham Shui Po are the ultimate watering holes for chefs at night.”
When chefs gather after their shifts, there’s no offswitch—that is to say, the food doesn’t lose its importance. We’ve observed chefs from all around the city coming together after service ends, a drink in one hand and a pair of chopsticks in the other. It’s not surprising their culinary journey continues after they leave the kitchen to unwind and explore our dining scene—and they know some of the best spots. Trust your local chef.
“Hanging out with chefs is a good opportunity to know what’s going on beyond the kitchen, where we spend so many
hours of our lives.”—Vicky Cheng