Wok master-in-training Sam Lui and Ser Wong Fun owner Gigi Paulina Ng are carving a new path for sustainability in Cantonese cooking with a pop-up taking place during Earth Month
In more normal times, a 126-year-old restaurant specialising in snake soup would be the last place to expect a vegetarian dinner series to take place—though as we know by now, these times are anything but normal. The restaurant in question is Ser Wong Fun, an establishment among the oldest in Hong Kong which, in addition to its famed snake-based bisque, serves a menu of 178 staple Cantonese dishes—including sweet corn sauce with fried fish, and glutinous rice with preserved sausages—that have stayed unchanged for generations.
For several nights this month, however, Ser Wong Fun's veteran chefs have set aside those well-worn recipes to make space for 28-year-old Sam Lui, a self-styled "wok apprentice", to take command of the stoves. Lui, one of Tatler Dining's Rising Star awardees in 2020, hosts regular dinners at her family's Sheung Shui soy sauce farm under the moniker of Wendy's Wok World, a conceptual alter ego that evolved from a performance art project exploring notions of tradition and authenticity, into what is now a private kitchen serving vegetable-focused takes on dishes such as mapo tofu and typhoon shelter sea cucumber.
As she has become more practised, Lui has branched out into collaborations with restaurants and bars around Hong Kong Island; her latest "Omni Wok The World" pop-up was conceived in partnership with sustainable food initiative Green Monday to highlight their OmniPork brand of plant-based meat alternatives. It is her most ambitious yet, serving 64 covers over four nights.
"I've actually been the biggest fan of OmniPork for the longest time, literally since they started," says Lui, recalling how she would tag their official Instagram account every time she shared a dish made using the product as part of a running joke among her friends. "One time David [Yeung, founder of Green Monday] saw a picture of my mapo tofu dish and it caught his eye, so we started messaging and he came and tried it, and we thought we really had to do something together."
They settled on Ser Wong Fun as the venue thanks to David Yeung's long-time friendship with fourth-generation owner, Gigi Paulina Ng. A former finance worker and the youngest of six daughters, Ng was at first reluctant to take over the helm of the family restaurant, but in her two decades in the role has dutifully preserved the classic dishes and the restaurant's loyal following of older customers, while breaking new ground through collaborations with the likes of Michelin-starred Paste Bangkok.
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