THE FUTURE OF DIM SUM IS INSTAGRAMMABLE
At Hong Kong Disneyland, you can get a red bean bun crafted to look like Olaf from Frozen
Keung Mak has dedicated his life to dim sum. For more than two decades, the chef has travelled through the kitchens of traditional Chinese restaurants in his native Hong Kong that specialise in “little pieces of the heart” — one of many English translations for the signature meal of small plates and hot tea.
Hong Kong’s 7.5 million inhabitants continually pack more than 1,300 restaurants serving steaming baskets of shrimp dumplings ( har gow) and barbecue pork buns ( char siu bao). “The dishes haven’t changed in a century,” says Adele Wong, the author of the book Hong Kong Food & Culture.
Now some customers are as bored with eating the dim sum classics as chefs like Keung are with preparing them. In 2016 he broke with centuries of tradition and began pushing the boundaries of the meal at Social Place in Tsim Sha Tsui, a dense hub of highend restaurants, shops and hotels.
Social Place, which has nine locations across Hong Kong, China and Taiwan, has revamped dim sum for a new generation of diner: the millennials who pick where to eat based on Instagram feeds and who approach each meal like a photoshoot.
Keung’s creations first satisfy the eyes, then the stomach. One of these is a dumpling the shape and colour of a mushroom, filled with julienned king oyster fungi, ginger and truffle.
The pillowy white bao, or bun, is Keung’s muse. He’s transformed it into a pig’s face with a snout, eyes and little pink ears, filled with purple sweet potato instead of roast pork. (For those who want traditional pork, called char siu, Keung uses it to fill a turtle-shaped pastry.)
Another unconventional signature dish is the jam-filled, sugar-crusted red “bayberry” dumpling, with a mint sprig for a stem.
Keung’s custard bao replaces the gelatinous egg filling with a thick liquid that oozes out like lava — the dim sum equivalent of molten chocolate cake. The bun is black from the charcoal baked into the batter — a popular, if medically unproven, health craze — and a bit spongier.
Yum Cha, arguably the most famous of Hong Kong’s Instagram-oriented dim sum chains, also specialises in pig-shaped baos and hot custard molten buns. Customers appear to enjoy poking holes in the dumplings’ “mouth”, resulting in what general manger Kenneth Ng calls “a hilarious puking effect”.
Not to be outdone, the chain Dim Sum Icon serves “pooping” chocolate buns. Crystal Lotus at Hong Kong Disneyland features a red bean bun crafted to look like Olaf from Frozen, plus other edible Pixar and Disney stars.
Keung’s latest experiment at Social Place is not a visual dish that will delight kids who want to make a dumpling “vomit”. Instead, it’s a riff on a ball of sticky rice stuffed with chicken and a barbecued pork pastry he has augmented with katsuobushi (dried, fermented tuna). It pushes the boundaries of the form, rather than breaks them.
“Dim sum is very traditional,” Wong says. “Chefs have been creative but don’t want to bastardise it completely.”