Profile | Why new Hong Kong cake shop Otera’s pastry chef and founder wants to you to enjoy Michelin-star-level desserts at home
- Once the pastry chef for fine-dining restaurants including Nobu and Ando, Joanna Yuen has opened her own boutique cake shop, Otera, focusing on Japanese pastry
- She says only being able to eat fine-dining desserts in restaurants is limiting – she wants to package their technique and stories for people to take away
Pastry chef Joanna Yuen is constantly thinking about how to improve her new Hong Kong business, Otera, such as by creating new desserts, making larger cakes, increasing sales, improving delivery and opening another shop space.
“Planning ahead is good,” Yuen, 35, says of the last issue. “I am curious to know how to keep product quality while I expand.”
She has analysed her local competitors, from Lady M to Bakehouse – the former sells crepe cakes that are made in a central kitchen while the latter bakes products on site to ensure crispiness.
“The more I’m in this business, the more I understand why brands have to do things in a certain way,” she says. “It definitely makes me wonder how I should expand.”
Yuen previously worked for fine-dining restaurants including Nobu (now closed), at what was the InterContinental Hong Kong, and the one-Michelin-star Ando, in the city’s Central business district. Sometime into her second year at the latter, she decided to strike out on her own.
As a pastry chef and entrepreneur, she’s on a steep learning curve, determined to take the path of constant self-improvement – which is what Otera is about.
