Hong Kong’s Best Pastry Chef on the unique challenges of creating fine treats: 100 Top Tables 2023 award winner Don Ng oversees all The Royal Garden hotel’s cakes, pastries and biscuits – no easy feat

Ng is executive pastry chef of the hotel’s Fine Foods Shop, specialising in French and Japanese pastries and cakes, and has worked for other hotels and Patisserie Tony Wong

His time in Taiwan inspired an Assam black tea with white peach flavour, while other cakes have echoed Lunar New Year decorations or sprouted chocolate flowers, like on his lockdown Mother’s Day cake

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Don Ng, executive pastry chef at The Royal Garden in Hong Kong. Photos: Handout

Published: 10:31am, 3 Apr 2023Updated: 6:08pm, 22 Nov 2023

When chef Don Ng, executive pastry chef of the Fine Foods Shop at The Royal Garden in Hong Kong, found out that he was the recipient of the Best Pastry Chef award for the 2023 edition of South China Morning Post’s annual 100 Top Tables fine dining guide, he was taken aback. “I’m surprised to be awarded with such an honourable achievement,” he said. “I think part of the reason I was chosen was because of my creativity and high quality, and I want to thank The Royal Garden for giving me the opportunity to try out new creations, and of course my team for their contributions.”

Specialising in French and Japanese pastries and cakes, Ng has 15 years of experience, having worked previously for other hotels and for Patisserie Tony Wong. He is responsible for all the cakes, biscuits and pastries available throughout the hotel as well as in the Fine Foods Shop.

The special Easter cake from the Fine Foods Shop at the Royal Garden.

A typical day for Ng, and his team of 38, includes the making of 100 whole cakes of up to 16 different types, 250 individual cake slices across 16 varieties, 500 tins of butterfly biscuits (a bestseller), 50 tins of other biscuit varieties and hundreds of pastries.

“My key responsibility beyond the conceptualisation of the products is to monitor production and ensure the product conditions and quality are up to our high standards,” he said, before adding, “I’m also responsible to keep a continuous improvement in order to make our products perfect.”

Chestnut cake from the Fine Foods Shop at the Royal Garden.

Ng says one of the main challenges of this demanding role is to manage the workflow, as this includes producing current products while at the same time developing new products, which are planned up to three months before launch.

Another challenge that Ng faces is staffing. “I think adequate manpower is a unique challenge to a large hotel environment. Since staffing keeps changing from time to time, and considering such a large scale of staff in the hotel, I have to arrange and ensure a good training process for all pastry chefs in order to maintain quality.”

The opulent interiors of the Fine Foods Shop at the Royal Garden.

Staying creative and on-trend is also part of his role and Ng seeks inspiration from social media, daily life and his own personal experiences. For example, Ng conceptualised and produced a cake inspired by the traditional decorations linked to Lunar New Year.