Will there still be freshly made dim sum in Hong Kong? Departing chef urges young chefs to embrace Cantonese cuisine
- Jowett Yu, executive chef of restaurant Ho Lee Fook, hopes young chefs will work in Chinese kitchens and preserve ‘vanishing’ Cantonese cuisine
- Yu, who is moving with his family to Sydney, has a simple message for them: ‘This is a part of your past, part of your identity’
Jowett Yu, executive chef of Chinese restaurant Ho Lee Fook, will soon leave Hong Kong, but he hopes he has inspired some young people to get into cooking in his seven years in the city. And not just any cooking, but Cantonese cuisine.
He’s worried he won’t be able to eat freshly made dim sum if he comes back to Hong Kong in 20 years’ time, noting that the average age of dim sum chefs in the city is 55.
“I worry about this. It’s a vanishing cuisine,” says Yu, 39. “I hope there will be more young people of Hong Kong appreciating the unique and important cuisine of this region.
“I hope that when young cooks enter the profession, they don’t go to cook Western food, Japanese food, or French or Italian food because it’s easier or more prestigious. You should go work in a Chinese restaurant. This is a part of your past, part of your identity, and you can never be taken away from this. This is why I entered Chinese cooking.”
Restaurant groups like Tai Hing and Tao Heung now use robots to stir-fry noodles and fry rice. While Yu hasn’t tried them, he says this is the reality – there aren’t enough qualified cooks entering the profession and so robotic chefs have been invented as the solution.
