HONG KONG EXODUS SET TO BOOST UK RESTAURANTS
Chinese cuisine has always been affected by the currents of Chinese history — wherever it is found. But for the popular TV chef and cooking writer Ching He Huang, the likely exodus of hundreds of thousands of people from Hong Kong in the wake of mainland China’s tightening grip on the territory is personal.
Huang, a Taiwanese raised in South Africa and London, is a culinary star in Britain, where she is widely known simply as Ching. But now, the Chinese community in the UK is bracing for a new wave of exiles from Hong Kong fleeing China’s demolition of civil rights.
Beijing’s actions have prompted the UK to offer permanent residence for 2.9 million Hong Kong people who hold British travel documents or are eligible to apply for them, along with 2.3 million dependents. London estimates that up to 322,000 people will move in the five years to 2026, adding up to £2.9 billion (US$3.9 billion) to the British economy, but independent estimates have ranged up to 1 million people.
The scheme is likely to transform Britain’s Chinese community, which numbered 433,000 people in the 2011 census, the last for which figures are available. But Huang also sees a major upside for the British food and beverage sector.
“Selfishly,” she says, “this is going to mean more Chinese grocers and many new Chinese restaurants of high quality, replacing the takeaways on every high street.”
The UK is already the leading showcase for Chinese food in Europe, thanks to its connection with Hong Kong, which began in 1842. Geoffrey Leong, the owner of Dumplings’ Legend restaurant in London and the Zen chain in Hong Kong, says the biggest impact on the UK took place in the 1970s.
“Immigrants from Hong Kong’s New Territories … brought a great gift to people of the United Kingdom: myriad Cantonese restaurants [offering
Hong Kong’s regional cooking] and the world’s most centrally located Chinatown, right in the midst of London’s West End entertainment district.”
Four decades on, aided by popular cooking shows, the British have enthusiastically embraced Chinese cuisine, alongside the food of former South Asian colonies in India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka. All are popular takeaway foods, as well as accounting for a substantial proportion of restaurants.
A recent British Takeaway Campaign report on the impact of Covid-19 found that UK residents spent an average of 17% of household expenditure on takeaway food in 2020, amounting to £15.1 billion. However, the report did not specify the proportion of Chinese and South Asian food.
Recent years have also brought a big rise in authentic Chinese cuisine. Once hard-to-find Chinese ingredients have also become staples on supermarket shelves, and there is an ever-expanding range of regional Chinese restaurants, ranging from Sichuanese to Muslim-based Xian fare.
“The main difference now is competition,” says Leong. “Any place in Chinatown used to survive, even if it was terrible. Now they really have to be good.”
Lucy Tse-Mitchell, managing director of SeeWoo UK, a large retailer and distributor of Chinese goods founded by her father, an earlier migrant from Hong Kong, says the basic model for restaurants has changed, with new generations wanting to make them more fashionable, with locations in better areas. “With people travelling so much, Asian cuisines [have become] very trendy,” Tse-Mitchell adds.
With a strong tradition of home deliveries, Chinese restaurants have been less affected by the pandemic than much of the UK restaurant industry, with even luxury restaurants such as Hakkasan experimenting with deliveries to survive lockdowns.
Nevertheless, central London became something of a ghost town in terms of dining. “Each week got quieter and quieter,” says Leong. “The buffet restaurants aimed at budget travellers really dried up. About 10 to 15 establishments in Chinatown have closed permanently.”
Leong, whose car tyres were slashed during the pandemic because of antiAsian sentiment relating to the source of the virus, says the Chinese restaurant sector was harmed by the perceived link in media reporting between the outbreak and China.
“Every time they presented bad news, China was used as a backdrop,” he says, calling for Chinese chefs “to make sure celebrity chefs aren’t just Europeans, but that we’ve got more of our own [chefs like] Gordon Ramsey and Jamie Oliver”.
Andrew Wong, whose parents ran a cheap Chinese takeaway, is a perfect example of the trend. His London establishment A. Wong, which has two Michelin stars, is the much-lauded flagship of the city’s modern Chinese cuisine — in part because of the application of his work as a research associate at London’s prestigious School of Oriental and African Studies to new creations on the plate.
“The anthropology of food is about so much more than filling your stomach, and every ingredient brings a significant history,” Wong says, adding that the Covid-19 crisis has given him “a whole new respect” for people running takeaway restaurants.
“Chinese have a long tradition with this, which is taken for granted, but our restaurants do this sort of food so well, you just have to sit back and admire them,” he says, adding that the concept of authenticity is an illusion.
“Gastronomy is a cultural construct. Cuisines are always evolving, and China, with 15 countries at its border, became like a big sponge, stealing more flavours than anywhere else. Look at how Sichuan made chillies their own, [and] what the Taiwanese have done, turning tapioca from the New World into bubble tea.”
Explaining a philosophy that has helped him pair Beijing duck with caviar, Wong adds, “It’s great to celebrate heritage but the job of a chef is to cook for people. And if people in the
UK still have this misconception that Chinese food can’t be a luxury, we’ve got to push their curiosity to prove them wrong.”
Unfortunately, business is becoming more difficult for many Chinese restaurants — especially at the less-expensive end of the sector — because of growing labour shortages. A 2016 survey by the British Takeaway Campaign found that nearly a third of 300 such restaurants were experiencing labour shortages, and the problem has been worsened by immigration rules introduced in the wake of Brexit.
While there are a number of college programmes to train local chefs, the shortage has led to an increase in simpler operations emphasising “snackery or hot pot, noodles and buns”, according to Fuchsia Dunlop, a cookery writer. Danny Yip, owner of The Chairman restaurant in Hong Kong, also warns that the development of Chinese cuisine in the UK is being limited by the shortage of chefs.
Yet this is precisely where the migration of hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people could help. Yip says many Hong Kong chefs may prefer to stay in the territory, where restaurants are recovering from the pandemic. But he thinks some will leave, easing the UK skills shortage and helping to meet demand for Chinese food from other new migrants, many of whom share an aversion to non-Cantonese Chinese cooking.
“I grew up in Hong Kong myself and I never ate Western food, not once,” says Leong. “These people coming over [to the UK will] want to eat Chinese every day, and every family comes with their favourite dishes, all connected to memories of home they’ll be missing.”