Why these fine dining chefs love instant noodles – and how they’re firing up Hong Kong’s culinary scene
Fine dining in Hong Kong has long meant fancy French or Italian menus crafted by imported chefs – but a new crop of young talent is changing that
What’s a true Hong Kong moment? How about chewing the fat with three young local chefs, all at the helm of top-notch fine-dining establishments – and having the subject of instant noodles coming up more than once?
“That’s my lifeblood,” Antoni Au Ho-yin says vehemently. A cheerful, bespectacled individual known affectionately as “Toni”, Au is currently stationed in Shenzhen as consulting chef for French bistro L’Avenue. French haute cuisine may be the Écriture restaurant alum’s bread and butter, but it doesn’t render him immune to the siren scent of instant noodles simmering away on the stove. I doubt many of us are. Whether we’re quaffing a blue styrofoam bowl of seafood noodles in the fluorescent hum of a 7-Eleven, or standing over a pot of roiling water in our kitchens waiting for the curly square to unravel, in a way, instant noodles are the lifeblood of countless people in Hong Kong: powering busy, sleep-deprived students and workers to fight another day. And Toni? Well, he’s one of us.
“When you’re coming off a 12-hour shift, you don’t want to do much. You take whatever’s in the fridge or whatever you brought home from the restaurant, add instant noodles and that’s it. That’s the meal,” he says. “[Or] you take a long shower, then you make yourself a steaming hot bowl of noodles. It’s perfect.”
The prevalence of Hong Kong’s lowbrow food culture belies the fact that the city is also home to one of the world’s most prodigious fine-dining scenes. The two are day and night, yet residents are often well-versed in both.
And now we are seeing a new generation of chefs, who grew up with Hong Kong’s tomato-fried-eggs, cha chaan teng and instant noodles, running fine-dining restaurants.
I’m sitting with Au, Frankie Wong Sui-wan, head chef of French-Japanese restaurant Ankôma, in Tsim Sha Tsui, and Zinc Leung Hon-sun, who owns and runs omakase establishment Sushi Zinc, in Shau Kei Wan; all are classically trained chefs. Au and Wong were schooled at the city’s International Culinary Institute and Leung at the Hong Kong Culinary Academy.
Instant noodles aside, cooking professionally is rarely a career one simply falls into. Leung recalls the warning he received on his first day of culinary school: “You have to make sure you want to be in this industry for a long time. Otherwise, leave now.”
