Last Under the Table

I came from a family where none of the girls cooked, or even knew how. My mother grew up in a time when home economics was looked at with the virtues of female repression. This combined with the fact my grandfather was a cook, not a chef, rendered the Wong clan useless in the kitchen.

So we ate out a lot, as in every meal. If we ate in, it was from a take-away counter or leftovers microwaved from previous meals. This was my diet growing up, a lifetime of salt, MSG, butter and chemicals from melting plastic containers. It all sounds tragic now, but I can tell you it was a truly luxurious way to eat, a gourmet lesson in every meal.

In Hong Kong, the majority of us eat out at least once a day. Maybe because dining out can be cheaper than eating in; probably because we are lazy; definitely because we treat a visit to a restaurant as a source of entertainment.

Over the last 20 years, I’ve seen Hong Kong graduate from mediocre chain imports to world-class dining in every genre. But still, Hong Kong doesn’t have the international applaud that many other dining cities do. Why? As I write my last Under the Table column, I asked my friends in the industry to chime in on how we can make Hong Kong a better dining city.

I’m not sure Wagamama would have been a huge international success if it was started in, say, Paris instead of London. London at the time was short of cheap and modern dining spots and Wagamama with its minimalist-chic-eats alternative gave London town an instant talking point in the media. It was the (English-language) food media that spread the word, worldwide, and help make Wagamama a household name. If you look at other world-recognisable restaurants, the majority of them are located in big (English-language) media hubs: New York, London, increasingly Singapore. I believe a lot of this has to do with international publications getting the word out. Thus, the first thing we can do is (self-servingly) get our restaurant coverage on the international map. This is a job for food writers, publications, and public relations.

But before we do that we need to fix a few things. Hong Kong needs to grow some national pride before we boast about it. I think we’ve exhausted the dim sum trolleys, Chris Patten’s egg tarts and HKTB’s push on muddy water-tank seafood. Other countries’ one number food export is their chefs.

Bo Innovation’s Alvin Leung knows this. He is Hong Kong representation at every major food event from the Sydney to the Bangkok Food Festival delivering nouvous-Hong Kong cookery with his vile “Sex on the Beach” (an edible condom filled with some sort of gummy cream which is laid on a sandy mushroom dusted plate). But he is getting Hong Kong a lot of attention outside our borders and we should applaud him for his wok-and-shock efforts.

Hong Kong needs to support (read: money) our home-grown talents if we are going to play with the other foodie cities. The biggest disappointment I’ve seen in covering food for the last five years was that we don’t give chefs with Chinese names top billing. If it is an imported chef from France, his name would be synonymous with the restaurant. But Chinese chefs are often left faceless, and rarely get the number one spot in top kitchens. That needs some rethinking.

But I hear restaurateurs barking. Chefs leave if they are offered 50 cents more elsewhere. They also give the middle finger if they asked to stay on one more hour than is required. For many cooks, this is a job, not a career. Cooks join a kitchen not to learn, but to get paid. The idea that cooking as a creative outlet is a very modern notion, a vanity job, and not a noble one. “Better training would give them pride,” says Gerald Li, owner of Liberty Exchange. “[Being a chef] is a career not a job. At the end of a shift, Makoto [Liberty’s executive chef] stays to scrub the kitchen. That is in his training.”

The number one cost for many restaurants is the rent. I would be deemed a dreamer if I thought this article would encourage rents to be lowered for the sake of good dining. But if rent is driving the way we build restaurants, and therefore eat, then we need to seriously rethink how we do this. One of the reasons why we have so many Italian and Japanese restaurants is because the formula has proven to work over and over again. Meaning A+B=$$$$. Also, we like it. But when you look closely, the food cost is low (even in Japanese cuisine) and a restaurant can sell it for a few hundred times its cost. Profit is driving our menus.

Rent is also the reason why we don’t invest in the décor of our city’s restaurants. We have a culture of signing short-term leases, five years or under. “You only have a short amount of time to recoup your money back,” says Alan Lo of the Pressroom Group. So why would you bother to make multi-million dollar structural changes and invest in nice furnishings, if in under five years time, you have to give it all back?

Now you are delusional if you start a restaurant with the goal of getting rich. There are better ways of making money than opening a restaurant. The amount of time and resources that goes into restaurant is all-consuming, and often for little glory. You have to love it –service, entertaining, cleaning, taking care of people. What? Did you think it was about the food? People who do this line of work slave seven days a week, give up all their holidays and weekends and take shit from their customers. They do it because they can’t imagine themselves doing anything else. And when the customers notice that kind of commitment, the reward is financial, but that should never be the goal.

Stop copycatting. For this to happen, chefs needs to exercise the right part of their brains; owners need to encourage this and not make menus based only on budgets; but most importantly diners need to be more adventurous and stop requesting Caesar salads, seafood over carbs, and molten chocolate cakes. We need to evolve our menus. I’m encouraging everyone to order something less familiar before the owners take it off the menu and swap it for Campbell soup over pasta.

Lose central purchasing. TBLS Chf Que van Dong says the reason why you see the same ingredients everywhere is because of central purchasing. Central purchasing is a hotline chefs call to order their food. If you are not a big buyer (Maxim’s) then the hell with you. You’ll get the wiltiest celery stalks, waygu beef (because they are not carrying any other types), and the occasional floppy fish fillet. This is mostly because central purchasing deals with suppliers who give them the best deals. So the Hong Kong diner gets to eat ingredients with the lowest costs. This is also why we don’t see a variety of fish, game meats, and vegetables on menus. If central purchasing doesn’t have a relationship with a farmer that sells heirloom tomatoes, then you are going to get the same watery cherry tomato as everyone else. Chefs, pick up a basket and go to the wet markets or order direct from the supplier. We beg of you.

Invest in our bread basket. Return the bottles mineral water comes in, rather then tossing for wash and reuse. Print the name of local farmers on the menu. Go to lesser known areas to eat to avoid paying for rent not food quality, also to support other foodie neighbourhoods. Be nice to your server –tip them. Put down the camera and dine rather than document. Encourage good restaurants by telling a staff member that you like what they are doing. Run from menus that start with Caesar salads.

And remember, you know what good food is. You’ve tasted it. I’m talking to the diner, the chef and the owners. Stop compromising for dollar signs. And if you do we, Hong Kong diners, will reward you with our loyalty.