Cover Restaurant Cafe Bau’s new menu (Photo: courtesy of Cafe Bau)
Restaurant Cafe Bau’s new menu (Photo: courtesy of Cafe Bau)
1 / 1
Despite the relative open-mindedness of Hong Kong diners, the city still has much room for improvement when it comes to being a global capital of culinary innovation—but these restaurants are paving the way forward
Hong Kong is an enigma when it comes to culinary innovation. True, our well-travelled denizens are more accepting of left-field cuisines than many other Asian cities, yet at the same time, the city’s ultra-high rents discourage restaurateurs from taking risks on culinary formulas that haven’t already been tried and tested a thousand times over.
Against the odds, there are still those mavericks who go against the grain. Feuille, the winner of Tatler Dining’s Best New Restaurant, is a paramount example of this: despite having no prior attachment to Hong Kong, respected French chef David Toutain, of the eponymous two-Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris, has managed to corral locally sourced, sustainably grown ingredients into a plant-forward menu that not only delivers deliciously novel flavours by the spade, but so with a diminutive carbon footprint to boot.
The dill pil-pil sauce, made by boiling down turbot bones to extract their gelatinous collagen, then blending it with dill oil into an unctuous, mayonnaise-like accompaniment to the bread course, is a prime example of the ingenuity on display here; as is a dish of spiny lobster wrapped in saffron-infused milk skin and served over rosemary-laced charcoal.
Above The Chairman’s camphor wood-smoked black-footed goose (Photo: The Chairman)
Above Cafe Bau’s oxen pithivier (Photo: courtesy of Cafe Bau)
The Chairman’s camphor wood-smoked black-footed goose (Photo: The Chairman)
1 / 2
Another innovator in the sustainability space is Cafe Bau, the casual sister restaurant to the original Hong Kong molecular trendsetter, Bo Innovation. Together with chef-patron Alvin Leung, head chef Kasey Chan has lofty ambitions to source 100 per cent of their ingredients from local suppliers, even going the extra mile to procure super-small-batch, locally grown rice from Yi O, a farming community on the western edge of Lantau Island.
There are also what I like to call the new traditionalists: restaurants that serve dishes that seem like they’ve been around forever but have never been made before—the result of a deep knowledge of the “parent” cuisine and the desire to innovate in a manner that is entirely coherent with the traditions that inform the restaurant. Wing and The Chairman are both prime examples of this approach: at the former, chef Vicky Cheng taps into hyper-seasonal produce and laborious cooking and plating techniques for jaw-dropping ensembles; while at the latter, founder Danny Yip uses the building blocks of the classics as a springboard for obsessively tested recipes that push the envelope of Cantonese cuisine.
See also: Inside the mind of a culinary icon: Danny Yip’s journey with The Chairman
Above Wing reinterprets fish maw (photo: courtesy of Wing)
Above Desserts at Feuille (Photo: courtesy of Feuile)
Wing reinterprets fish maw (photo: courtesy of Wing)
1 / 2
While the exploits of Cheng’s and Yip’s establishments are well-documented, another restaurant that flies the flag for neo-Cantonese food is Dionysus & Loong, a Tin Hau izakaya opened by two former fine-dining chefs that serves distinctly down-to-earth cuisine with a multitude of local influences. Taking what they’ve learnt over a decade in the kitchens of Amber, 8 1/2 Otto e Mezzo Bombana, Épure and Arbor, and combining it with a love for late-night eats, chefs Ming and Chi-Lung have created a unique menu of hybrid dishes cooked with tender loving care over a binchotan charcoal grill. Look for the likes of watermelon with Lao Gan Ma chilli sauce, lo shui-marinated lavender pigeon, and crispy tilefish in mustard greens broth.
While the pressure is real when it comes to opening a restaurant in this city of ours, they say pressure makes diamonds—and these culinary gems are worth every dollar.
Topics
Gavin Yeung is a Hong Kong-based writer and was the editor at Tatler Dining. He has written across the realms of F&B, design, fashion and travel, with a focus on in-depth profiles and experiential features. Previously, he held editorial positions at Hypebeast, Soho House and Vogue Hong Kong. He’s also a keen photographer and aspiring home bartender, and is constantly thinking of original, Cantonese-inflected (and occasionally questionable) cocktails to shake up. Follow him on Instagram at @gaviny.
