Josh and Caleb Ng are the twins behind food and beverage consultancy Twins Kitchen, coffee shop Common Ground and new sando bar, Cut
What were you doing before joining the dining industry?
Josh: We were born and raised in Hong Kong and did one year of investment banking courses at the University of California, Los Angeles. However, it just wasn’t for us. Though we never went to culinary school, we changed career paths to pursue our passion, which was food and drink.
How did you first discover your love for food?
Caleb: Our parents love to say that when we were kids, our favourite toy to play with was a spatula. We have many fond memories from primary school, making pancakes together in the kitchen on Sundays.
Tell us about your start as wine importers.
Josh: For us, wine and food have always come hand in hand. We fell in love with wine in college and studied WSET Level 2 in our senior year. Therefore, [going from wine importing to F&B] never felt like a major transition to us, but rather a natural extension of our journey within food and beverage.
What skills do you each bring to the table?
Caleb: I’m the more detail-oriented finance mastermind. But Josh is the one with the big vision. He dreams up all sorts of crazy ideas.
Josh: I’m more hands-on and creative, whereas Caleb has a knack for operations and branding. You’ll often find him on the floor of our restaurants mingling with staff and guests. People say we are very different; however, we think our differences complement each other and our core values have always been in line.
Is it hard to mix business and family?
Josh: We fight very often—but in the best way possible. Usually it’s about some small thing or other. We always have very different perspectives. But the end goal is the same: we just strive to be the best.
What can you tell us about Cut’s menu?
Josh: It’s a small menu with four sandos: egg and bacon, octopus, braised brisket, and our vegetarian portobello mushroom and ratatouille sando. Then we have four snacks, which include homemade okonomi fries, headcheese [fried meat] fritters, and mantou [bread] and parma ham. We top that off with a selection of natural wines and music from some of Hong Kong’s most passionate DJs, including Mr Ho and Arthur Bray. It’s good vibes only.
What was the inspiration behind the vinyl and sando concept?
Caleb: We used to always visit vinyl bars when travelling to Tokyo. There’s something very personal about these places that we really loved. We were fed up of not being able to find a similar scene in Hong Kong, so we decided to open our own. As for sandos, everyone loves a good sandwich; they are found in every culture and therefore really fit with our vision of bringing people from all walks of life together.
“For the inbetweeners” is an Instagram caption you’re fond of. What does it mean?
Josh: It’s a saying that Arthur Bray says a lot and which really captures our vision for Cut. We hope it can be a crossroads or meeting place for different ideas, cultures and people: a place for inbetweeners.