Editor’s Note
Like most foreigners when they first arrive in
Hong Kong, I found myself entering the cult of Black Sheep Restaurants two years ago by way of La Vache!, the popular-with-expats Soho brasserie that only serves one thing, steak frites, with a side of Parisian exuberance. On my first visit, while waiting nearly an hour for a table—and wondering a) why the exclamation point? is the cow angry? and b) how is it possible that the hostess seems to recognise every guest who walks in as if they were a regular?—i looked up the restaurant online and fell into the black hole of Black Sheep.
In a world-class dining city such as Hong Kong, there is no shortage of options for a person whose interests range from touring every Michelin-starred temple of haute Cantonese cuisine to seeking out the city’s absolute best fish balls and noodle soup (my money is on On Lee Noodle Shop in Shau Kei Wan, for that matter). But a restaurant group of the size and scale of Black Sheep is still remarkable, with two dozen brands in Hong Kong and 30 restaurants covering everything from mainstream pizza and burgers to refined Punjabi, Italian, Japanese and French cooking. I eat out at least twice a week and still I’ve only made my way through about half of them.
Syed Asim Hussain and Christopher Mark, who co-founded Black Sheep nine years ago, are on a mission to create a Hong Kong-based hospitality empire in the mould of Mandarin Oriental, the Peninsula or Shangri-la. But their success has invited both envy and criticism from competitors, not that either really minds the heat.
“I have a silly amount of belief in myself and the team,” Hussain tells me in this issue. “But I want to build something that’s still here long after you and I are gone. I think that’s what success looks like in a city that is obsessed with newness.”
For their ambition alone, Hussain and Mark earned a place on our debut Tastemakers List, the latest instalment of the Asia’s Most Influential series, this time focused on the leading players of Hong Kong’s food and beverage industry. Charmaine Mok, content director for dining, and her incredible teammates have assembled a list of more than 40 newsmakers who likewise have shown commitment to driving a path forward during an exceptionally challenging period of protests and a pandemic. One thing that inspired me, while reading their stories, was to learn that virtually all of them were called to their professions by a higher sense of duty—to create something new, to promote sustainability or to help their communities. In the case of Hussain, his greatest ambition is not to open more restaurants but to someday return to Pakistan and hold public office (preferably prime minister, as aiming for the top is simply the Black Sheep way).
Interestingly, working in restaurants might just be the right training for politics, as Hussain’s father, Syed Pervez Hussain, once a hobbyist restaurateur himself, says: “The basic thing is to serve properly. If you can’t serve somebody who’s paying you, how can you serve others who are not going to pay you?”