Cantonese shows its fine-dining finesse
Several restaurants are pivoting from European and pan-Asian fare to Chinese cuisine to please local palates and are elevating the menu in response to customer demand
A fierce-looking tiger greets guests at Grand Majestic Sichuan – though, thankfully, it’s on the carpet covering the floor.
The supper club – replete with Gucci wallpaper – opened in Alexandra House in Central on Hong Kong Island in January, and is the newest addition to the Black Sheep Restaurants group.
It offers Sichuan dishes such as mapo tofu and gongbao chicken, cooked by Chinese-Canadian head chef Robert Wong, who previously worked at Chilli Fagara.
The opening followed soon after the group’s revamp of Cantonese restaurant Ho Lee Fook on Elgin Street in SoHo. Gone are the basement’s black walls and tables and loud music, and in its place is a glitzy, crimson dining room with mirrored ceilings and lions on the walls. Its menu now has more Hong Kong Cantonese than pan-Asian dishes.
Meanwhile, Miramar Group – known for Cantonese restaurants like Tsui Hang Village and Cuisine Cuisine – has transformed Western restaurant The French Window, in the IFC Mall in Central, into Chinesology. It now serves modern Chinese food helmed by chef Chau Sai-to, better known as Saito Chau.
This shift towards Chinese (in particular, Cantonese) cuisine among restaurant groups has not gone unnoticed by those familiar with the local dining scene. Many believe the change in tack is the result of the pandemic and the city’s dynamic zero-Covid policy that has shut out tourists from the city until recently.
This change of direction makes perfect sense for the many adaptable restaurateurs who take pride in Hong Kong’s food culture, like Syed Asim Hussain.
“I’m a really proud Hong Kong kid. This is my city and I think that Ho Lee Fook to me represents the best of Hong Kong’s new culture, new ethos, new energy,” says the Black Sheep Restaurants co-founder. “And for … Ho Lee Fook 2.0, I felt the food needed to be more recognisably Cantonese, Hong Kong in its DNA.
“We want to take Ho Lee Fook to other parts of the world. For me, [it’s like] I’m taking Hong Kong’s story to other cities.”
There are dishes like deepfried salt and pepper tofu, sand ginger crispy skin chicken, and steamed grouper with ginger, prepared by Hong Kong-born head chef ArChan Chan Kit-ying.
Chan cut her teeth on Chinese cuisine in her early 20s but, in the past few years, she mostly prepared contemporary European and pan-Asian dishes in Australia and Singapore before her return home in 2021.
Hussain and his business partner Christopher Mark have been interested in exploring Sichuan cuisine for some time, as “the Black Sheep community, our fans and friends were requesting it”, Hussain says. They ate around Chengdu, in Sichuan, six months before the pandemic hit in December 2019.
It wasn’t until 18 months ago, when Hongkong Land showed them the third floor space in Alexandra House, that the duo decided to create Grand Sichuan Majestic.
“There are a lot of good
Sichuan restaurants in Hong Kong, and we wanted to express it in a context that hadn’t been done before, similar to New Punjab Club,” Hussain says, referring to their Michelin-starred restaurant on Wyndham Street in Central.
Hussain says that while at first he and Mark made restaurants for themselves and their community, their guest profile is changing. “I think we are no longer viewed as the restaurant team for expats and tourists,” he says.
Classified Group, too, has been focusing on the local market by offering Chinese cuisine – although co-founder Paulo Pong Kin-yee claims that’s because his own palate has changed.
When the restaurant group opened The Pawn in a pawnshop on Johnston Road in Wan Chai in 2008, it served gastropub food, later hiring British celebrity chef Tom Aikens to elevate the menu.
When Classified Group renewed the lease in 2021, it pivoted the restaurant from modern British to contemporary Chinese – with very Western interiors.
Pong notes that alongside stalwarts like Fook Lam Moon and Forum Restaurant, more independent Chinese restaurants have sprung up in recent years, such as Xin Rong Ji and Yong Fu, which have generated a lot of interest in Cantonese cuisine.
He says his taste – and that of his business partner Arnold Wong Chi-chiu – has changed in recent years. “We are eating more Chinese food,” Pong says. “These few years, Cantonese food has evolved and there are new chefs in the industry, and young people like to eat refined Chinese cuisine, not old-school traditional food.”
As a result, The Pawn was transformed into Woo Cheong Tea House, an homage to the building’s original name when it was constructed in 1888.
Classified Group has also hired several young chefs in their 30s with over 10 years’ experience in a Chinese kitchen. “They have a foundation in traditional Chinese cuisine, but they are also young and keen to experiment to create new dishes,” Pong says.
On the menu at Woo Cheong Tea House is sweet and sour pork, with some pop rocks on the side for what Pong says is additional texture and fun; crispy baby pigeon presented in a nest complete with a tea-smoked egg; and steamed fish flavoured with 25-year-old mandarin peel.
“There’s a little twist but [with] respect to tradition,” he says, adding that the food is complemented with tea-based cocktails.
At Chinesology, the high ceilings and nooks – reminiscent of an upscale Chinese teahouse – offer the ideal ambience for intimate dining on steamed shrimp dumplings coloured with beetroot, xiaolongbao flavoured with kombu (edible kelp), and turnip puff pastry filled with shredded roast goose topped with dried strawberry.
We want to take Ho Lee Fook to other parts of the world. For me, [it’s like] I’m taking Hong Kong’s story to other cities
SYED ASIM HUSSAIN, BLACK SHEEP RESTAURANTS CO-FOUNDER
Young people like to eat refined Chinese cuisine, not old-school traditional food
PAULO PONG, CO-FOUNDER OF CLASSIFIED GROUP
According to Miramar Group, young professionals in their 20s and 30s who are keen to try something new dine here, while conservative diners prefer Cuisine Cuisine next door. The group doesn’t see the two places competing, but rather venues that offer different experiences.
“We see the high potential of the local market, and customers’ increasing demand [for] fine-dining and experiential dining,” an email from Miramar Group says.
Before social-distancing measures were relaxed on April 21, the lunch tasting menu at Chinesology was priced at HK$1,288 per person. Dishes included double-boiled fish maw soup, lobster with crabmeat, egg white custard and young coconut, and Oolong tea smoked chicken with osmanthus.
“Our guests are people who work at IFC, live nearby – some come from Kowloon to try our food,” chef Chau says. “Many are women in their 20s and 30s and they bring their parents here, who later come on their own.”
The chef, who has worked at Cantonese restaurant John Anthony and collaborated with Forum Restaurant in 2020, says many diners have returned since the opening of Chinesology in late February, and so he creates new dishes every week.