WOK AROUND THE CLOCK
Ken Hom, the master of Chinese cuisine, is a big fan of Hong Kong, where wealthy clients and blended cultures have given rise to some of the freshest, most innovative eating in the world
HONG Kong is the Oriental equivalent of Manhattan: a buzzy, cosmopolitan island city that never sleeps, where you can shop until you drop and eat pretty much everything from Thai, Taiwanese and traditional Shanghai dishes to Italian or French haute cuisine and McDonald’s fast food.
Life generally is lived in the fast lane, from the opulent bars of the Peninsula Hotel and the Mandarin Oriental to karaoke nights at Salon de Ning and retail therapy at Temple Street night market with its fashion outlets, food stalls, fortune tellers and Cantonese opera singers.
Speed is a key element in the food culture, too, typified by wok cookery, in which a few seconds of fierce heat provide the alchemy to turn fresh, simple ingredients into a meal you will never forget. In the West, there is no greater master of the technique than Ken Hom, OBE, the US-born Chinese chef and author, who in 1984 delighted television audiences with his BBC series Ken Hom’s Chinese
Cookery and continues to appear on programmes such as Sunday Brunch and
Saturday Kitchen. He has a pan-Asian restaurant, Mee, at the Copacabana Palace hotel in Rio de Janeiro, but he has a particular love of Hong Kong.
Here are his recommendations on what to eat and where to order it.
What makes the cuisine special?
Hong Kong has really benefited from its role as a port and a gateway between East and West. It has wealth, it has people with money … and there isn’t much to do apart from shop and eat.
The food scene is very dynamic with new restaurants opening all the time — there are 65 000 known establishments — and the Hong Kong Chinese have made eating an art. They are food-obsessed and, because they have money, they demand the best.
Another thing that makes Hong Kong special is the fusion of culinary cultures. The top hotels bring in chefs from France and Italy to run pop-up restaurants, and the Chinese chefs who work with them learn about new techniques and new flavours, then go off and start their own restaurants. They take traditional Chinese dishes and evolve them into something unique.
The dominant cuisine is Cantonese, regarded in China as the best in the world. It’s all about fresh ingredients, delicate flavours, split-second timing and fierceness of heat. A really good Cantonese chef can master the wok so the food continues to cook on the way out of the kitchen. They even time how long it sits on the plate before someone puts it in their mouth. It’s perfection.
Which dish sums it all up?
Shrimp-paste chicken. It’s marinated for a day in fresh ginger juice, rice wine, soy sauce and shrimp paste, which is pungent but moreish. They flour it with potato starch, which makes for a crispy batter, then immerse it in hot oil and remove it immediately.
Spoonful by spoonful, they ladle hot oil
over the food so it’s perfectly crispy but not oily. That’s as pure Hong Kong as you can get.
What else should we look out for? The Cantonese are famous for roasting, so the crispy pork and Peking duck are amazing. Most Cantonese are also very keen on steaming things — fish, scallops and even meat. It’s to highlight the freshness, and the moisture also helps to prevent the food from drying out. Dried seafood is also very popular — not just prawns but dried prawn roe, which they put on dim sum; and dried scallops, which have an unusual silken texture.
One thing that is very Hong Kong is “rice birds”, small birds that come into the fields in autumn at the time of the rice harvest. They’re like the French ortolans, which you roast and just eat in one bite.
Autumn is also the season for Shanghai hairy crab, known as mitten crab because of its furry claws, so you’ll see lots of dishes, including dumplings, made with fresh crab and roe.
■ HONG KONG IN FIVE COURSES
1. A typical brunch At Din Tai Fung I had one of the best xiaolongbao — little soup dumplings filled with broth and served in a bamboo steamer — that I have ever had. There are lots of things from Taiwan and it’s popular because it’s cheap. You have to queue because they don’t take reservations, but it’s worth it. Go with friends, so you can try a nice assortment of dishes. The restaurant is part of the Din Tai Fung group, whose outlets have maintained great consistency.
This one is on the Hong Kong island side.
ý Din Tai Fung, Shop G3-11, 68 Yee Woo Street, Causeway Bay, Hong Kong ( dintaifung.com.tw/en ). Three courses £12-£15 (R215-R270), without drinks.
2. Lunch A really nice place to go for dim sum is Island Tang. It’s decorated in the old Hong Kong style of 30 years ago, so it has atmosphere.
Lots of Chinese in the know go there. It’s the usual cast of characters — barbecued pork buns, steamed dumplings, stuffed peppers — but presented in an unusual way.
There’s also Nha Trang, which does Vietnamese food but in the spirit of Cantonese: very light, full of flavour, fresh. The pho noodles and the Vietnamese spring rolls are especially good.
Finally I would go to Yung Kee, an old restaurant that’s still very good and famous for its roast goose.
They also make wind-dried pork and liver sausages, which are slightly fatty and made with wine, so they’re very rich. All the fat goes into the rice, making it taste unbelievable.
ý Island Tang, Shop 222, The Galleria, 9 Queen’s Road, Central ( islandtang.com). Dim sum lunch £23-£39 (R412-R700).
ý Nha Trang, 88-90 Wellington Street, Central ( nhatrang.com.hk ). Three courses £15-£27 (R270-R484).
ý Yung Kee, 32-40 Wellington Street, Central ( yungkee.com.hk ). Set menus, all including roast goose, £29-£49 (R520-R880); à la carte, takeaway and “deluxe” set meals (seven to 11 lavish courses) also available.
3. Fine dining My favourite place is Yan Toh Heen, which has a Michelin star. You get an incredible view of the harbour, all the fittings are jade, and the chef, Lau Yiu Fai, deserves two stars for the refinement of his cooking.
I had Peking duck with pears and grapefruit. The pears were slightly sweet so you didn’t need a sauce; the grapefruit was acidic, which cut through the richness of the duck skin. Genius.
The other place is Amber, with two Michelin stars. The Dutch chef, Richard Ekkebus, cooks in classical French style using ingredients that reflect Hong Kong’s position as a global hub: Japanese oyster with foie gras confit in sauternes gel, say, or North Sea crab with palm heart from Mauritius.
ý Yan Toh Heen, InterContinental Hong Kong, 18 Salisbury Road, Kowloon ( hongkong-ic.intercontinental.com ). Three courses £22-£229; signature menus £162-£255.
ý Amber, The Landmark Oriental Hong Kong, 15 Queen’s Rd, Central ( amberhongkong.com ). Tasting menus £146-£224; three courses £101-£181.
4. An aperitif The most popular place in the city is the Lobby Lounge at the InterContinental hotel, which has a panoramic view of Hong Kong island. It’s all glass, so people just sit and stare. Sometimes you don’t even talk to the people you’re there with because you’re gog-eyed, especially at night. The Chinese like it because it has good feng shui; I like to go for a dry gin martini or a glass of champagne.
ý Lobby Lounge, InterContinental Hong Kong (details above). Cocktails £11.
5. Dinner What I like about Kin’s Kitchen is that the owner is a food critic who opened a restaurant — and it’s good. He’s taken traditional, home-cooked Cantonese recipes that I haven’t seen in 30 years and made them popular again. The crispy chicken is the best you’ll eat.
At the last minute, they ladle hot oil over it so the skin is super-crispy, the meat is moist and melting, and you dip it in a Szechuan pepper and salt mix.
My other favourite place for dinner is Wu Kong, which specialises in Shanghainese cuisine, Beijing dishes and dim sum. They have typical dishes such as “fake goose”, made with bean curd, and Shanghai dumpling with crabmeat inside and crab roe on top. It’s to die for.
ý Kin’s Kitchen, 5/F, W Square, 314-324 Hennessy Road, Wan Chai ( kinskitchen.com.hk). Dim sum £1.90-£3.70 each; three courses £17-£34; set menus £49 and £99 for two and four people.
ý Wu Kong, Basement, Alpha House, 27 Nathan Road, Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon ( wukong.com. hk). Three courses about £12, four-course hairy crab meal £31.
■ Download a copy of Ken Hom’s booklet celebrating his 30 years as the face of Chinese cuisine at kenhom.co.uk . —© Andrew Purvis, The Daily Telegraph