Forum’s Adam Wong on abalone, legacy and the soul of old Hong Kong

Wong’s initiation into Forum Restaurant felt as much like destiny as his entry into the restaurant industry. “So I was working at various restaurants, learning how to make dim sum and wok dishes. Then one day, again due to delivering eggs, I came to Forum Restaurant.”

“In the past, Causeway Bay had a famous food district. The whole Paterson Street was lined with 20 to 30 different restaurants serving various cuisines,” recalls Wong. “There was Singaporean cuisine, Vietnamese, Beijing, Sichuan, Cantonese and much more. There were also dim sum shops and small eateries. This was where the old Forum Restaurant was located.”

“Once again, someone asked if I knew of any available line cooks, and I said, ‘Hey, how about me?’ And just like that, I joined Forum. That was 1992, and I’ve stayed since.”

“Yeung handed over a few things for me to do, mostly plating. But I’ve always been doing stir-fries; I didn’t want to do plating. It’s a tedious position; it’s a supportive role in a Cantonese kitchen and you help with everything, from prep to steaming, frying and sauce-making.”

While the position Wong acquired at Forum was not what a budding chef had wished to do, he considered staying at the restaurant as a worthy investment. “I learnt a lot from working all of these positions, and I’d come to master it all. I also got to know Yeung better. He taught us everything without holding back. This mentor-apprentice relationship has influenced my whole life, you could say.”

In fact, the rapport Wong has cultivated with Yeung is a major reason he stayed at Forum for as long as he did. “Working in the kitchen is hard labour. Back then, it was very trendy to jump from job to job; people would leave for a slight salary increase, and didn’t really think about the long term. But I stayed because of Yeung. I often wondered why his abalone could fascinate so many people. And I persisted.”

“Every day I would accompany him home, as Yeung was getting on in years. And unconsciously, I received much guidance from him. He let me into his inner circle, and eventually he decided to pass what he had solely to me.”

In Wong’s words, “Forum is a traditional Cantonese restaurant. You can describe it as a palace-level fine-dining establishment. Here, you not only get to eat the abalone passed down by the master chef Yeung Koon-yat, but it’s also a place that emphasises precise heat control and masterful sauce work. The dishes that everyone is familiar with, like stuffed chicken wings with bird’s nest or fried rice, are actually the simplest yet most profound foundations of Chinese cuisine.”

“A lot of our dishes, like dried tangerine peel sweet and sour pork and our stir-fries, require wok hei [or breath of the wok]. And when it comes to the plating, it must be served piping hot. That is the characteristic of our Cantonese cuisine.”

Wong honoured this tradition under Yeung’s watchful eye until the master’s passing in 2023. Now at the helm, his goal remains clear: carry forward what he inherited and gently expand upon it.

“The public often criticises Forum Restaurant as being conservative and lacking innovation,” Wong recalls. “They say we’re always making the same types of dishes, and people always urged us to think of newer and more different ideas. But I think we’re the open-minded ones. Yeung was likely the first to promote eating abalone with a knife and fork, and he also celebrated the Western-style by-the-course serving of Chinese cuisine.”

“I like our dishes, so I maintain them and make what people want to eat. Blindly pursuing innovation can actually make you lose your soul. At Forum, it’s about eating abalone. To do something else entirely would mean losing our core identity.”

And that’s exactly what Wong set out to do at Forum: innovating within the throughlines of traditional recipes. Throughout the years, the restaurant has served modern creations such as crab shell topped with caviar and char siu made with Amadai fish. Rather than seeing tradition as a limiting factor for his experiments, Wong considers it a rulebook to retain the soul of his cuisine.

“When I was at the Chinese Culinary Institute studying the master chef course, I learned molecular gastronomy. It was all quite interesting, and most techniques I can employ in garnishing. But that’s just not what we’re about. You shouldn’t lose sight of the dish’s original intent. I don’t quite dare to say that my direction is definitely correct. But I have a principle I adhere to, which is to do my own dishes well, and that’s enough.”

For someone who lives and breathes Cantonese cuisine, who knows its ingredient-forward approach like the back of their hand, perhaps it comes as no surprise that Wong’s passion beyond the kitchen lies in the ingredients themselves. “I love researching ingredients. Almost every time I go abroad, be it provinces in Mainland China, LA, France or Canada, I end up researching some ingredient or another.”

“My greatest pleasure is researching abalone. I used to buy abalone and practice cooking it, then bring it back to the restaurant for Yeung to critique. You have to be infatuated with this craft. You have to talk to the abalone and take care of it. If it’s a nice day like today, I’ll dry them on the restaurant’s rooftop. But you need to keep an eye on them and observe the different phases of change. If you don’t care for them, they will spoil, grow mould, and won’t age properly.”

This obsession has also fuelled Wong’s desire to conduct a sort of abalone-focused ingredient tourism that allows the chef to understand not only the various ways different cultures cook, but also what constitutes the soul of their cuisine. “Our abalone comes mostly from Japan, and I like to go there and see their local methods,” says Wong. “I want to see how top chefs from different regions prepare this ingredient, whether the dish follows Western aesthetics or Eastern flavours, and how it balances the two.”

“At Forum Restaurant, adhering to a distinctive foundation brings about progress and inspiration. We want Cantonese cuisine to be even more spectacular and refined, so we go to different places, experience why these venues are so famous, what they excel in, and what is so delicious about their food. I don’t need to replicate their techniques and presentations, but I want to absorb how different cultures treat their food.”

He adds, “When I visit a place, I go to their wet markets. I want to see what kind of things they sell and if there’s any ingredient I’ve never encountered before. We can humble ourselves and learn about their dishes to gain some insight.”

Considering Hong Kong’s dining scene and Forum’s role in it, Wong says, “This city is full of human warmth, and this includes its culinary scene, its culinary culture. The restaurant has witnessed decades of changes, from a local dining hall built for the elite to the period after the SARS epidemic that brought about massive, rapid development in Hong Kong that yielded a new group of demanding, well-travelled customers.”

“This also taught us that we need to put in greater effort and more genuine skill to show people that we can do even better. I hope people can appreciate Cantonese cuisine as it is. This is the flavour of Hong Kong.”

During the Tatler Best Takeover Series, Wong worked alongside fellow Tatler Best chefs who are masters of their own cuisines, from the Ningbo-focused craft of Yong Fu Hong Kong’s Liu Zhen, to the flame-driven yakitori of Fumée’s Ryu Shunsuke and the terroir-driven French-Malaysian plates of Restaurant au Jardin’s Kim Hock Su.

Reflecting on his experience, Wong says, “I see my roots still in the core of Cantonese cuisine, but we can adapt, for instance changing our heat control and the types of sauces we use. But we maintain the essence of Cantonese cuisine. Cross-border collaborations like the guest chef series allow Cantonese cuisine to have more charm on the world stage and a greater capacity for culinary blending. That’s what we want.”

Wong has spent decades guarding Yeung’s legacy. When asked about his own, he’s characteristically humble. “I don’t want people to say I’m just the abalone chef of Forum Restaurant. Rather, I’d like them to say I’m a chef who deeply understands Cantonese culture and stands firm in his craft.”

“What I strive for is passing knowledge to young people, so that they will remember me as someone who, in his lifetime, only focused on doing one thing: respecting the master and the craft, bringing traditional culinary skills to their peak, and showing the world that Chinese cuisine chefs can shine brightly on an international stage.”

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