How does that team dynamic work? How involved are you?

We all have different divisions of work. I go out and get inspiration. In my notes, I have a huge list of ingredients—things I’ve seen, recipes, ideas and photos. I collect all of that every day. And then we have a theme, like last year, we focused on fire. With that theme, I dig out my notes, formulate ideas and then discuss them with my team. I will initiate because, honestly, chefs don’t go out and eat that often, and they work five or six days and long hours. So, I’ll formulate a rough cooking concept and process, then I discuss it with the chef and that’s how we start a dish. Most of the time, though, that idea does not work. Out of 20 ideas, and a lot of experimenting, we yield about two to three dishes for the whole year. So, if we can create four to five new dishes in a year, we’re happy.

In the demanding, and sometimes stressful, world of restaurants, how do you prioritise your mental well-being while running a business?

It’s extremely hard to survive in Hong Kong and make money by running a restaurant. I mean, the rent [here] is out of this world. And it is stressful. With Covid for the last three years too. We had a month when we couldn’t open because the government told us not to, but we decided to pay everyone. It’s not easy.

But I have developed a routine that I’ve been doing for many years. I get up at around 3.30am and I have four to five hours which is 100% ‘me time’. I exercise, meditate, read and think. No one will send you a WhatsApp at that time. Nothing. I think ‘me time’ is very important for mental well-being. It’s like an escape for me—like rebooting the computer. I think everyone needs enough ‘me time’ to reshuffle, tidy, get rid of rubbish, and then get ready for the day. That’s how I deal with it.

As a culinary icon, what role do you see yourself playing in nurturing and mentoring the next generation of chefs in Hong Kong?

To be honest, I don’t think I've done enough to be an icon. We have some young chefs working in our kitchen and they’re very creative. They don’t have the burden of legacy or think that they need to cook Chinese food in a certain way. They don't, because they grew up in a world with the internet and it’s more about sharing, being creative, and being an individual. Honestly, I’ve learned a lot from them. They have a weird way of seeing things. Well, weird to me, and I love to collaborate with them. I like working together to use local ingredients, including from the South China province, to find hidden ingredients or gems—something rare that has been forgotten—and create a unique Hong Kong food story. We need them [the next generation]. I need them to provide new inspiration. They have no limit.

The Chairman has teamed up with multiple chefs and restaurants recently. Can you tell us more about the value you find in these collaborations?

The Chairman didn’t do many collaborations, not for 13 years. I think we only did three in 13 years and then, because of Covid, the whole team, and me in particular, lost inspiration. It was a feeling of being trapped, like a bottleneck or something. So I talked to my team about what we could do, and we decided to go out and work with other people. So that’s what we did. We did four collaborations that year, and three of those were with restaurants of modern and Western-style cooking.

Each time we collaborate, we always request to figure out a new menu together. From the first amuse-bouche to the dessert. We don’t want to just bring three dishes from our restaurant, while you cook four dishes from your restaurant. We spent a lot of time on each collaboration, we’re talking about four to five months at least, and we’d travel to and from. Then, after these collaborations, we had so many ideas and could focus on new dishes.

Working with other chefs, particularly those not from Chinese cuisine, it’s not just about the cooking skill, it is the way that they think about an ingredient, how they structure a dish around it and ultimately present a dish. It is totally different from Chinese cooking. We cannot use some skills, like making cream or sabayon, which is too Western for us, but we can learn the way of thinking. That's what it’s all about... the thinking [behind it].

Do these collaborations also focus on local ingredients?

When we do collaborations, we often use their local ingredients. We may bring a few things from Hong Kong but 90% of the ingredients we have sourced are from that city or country. It’s in our nature. Cantonese food is about freshness and locality. A lot of people talk about farm-to-table, but that’s just natural to us. Each local ingredient gives you a certain flavour. It’s like wine, it gives you a certain flavour and style that you cannot get from another country. Why would someone fly to Hong Kong and eat foie gras from The Chairman? Using local ingredients is the essence of Cantonese cooking and each collaboration we do gives us more assurance about this idea.

Given The Chairman’s success, it’s natural that others may seek to replicate your concept or style. What are your thoughts on imitation within the dining world?

We all learn from others. We learn from old recipes, our peers growing up, and collaboration. Every restaurant and every chef is learning from someone else. And we are very comfortable sharing ideas, as long as the chef digests them, puts everything together, and then presents something unique. I think that’s beautiful. That’s the way that we’ve been cooking for thousands of years. I learned from my mom, your mom learned from her mom. Cooking is about sharing.

If anyone wants to know how to steam the flowery crab with aged Shaoxing wine, just ask me and I’ll send you the recipe. There are no trade secrets. But the direct 100% copy of a dish without inputting, I don’t think that that will work. I think that is a silly thing to do. The customer is not dumb. They see it, they understand it, and then they will compare it with the original. What is the point of a direct copy?

What are your aspirations for The Chairman and its broader role within the global culinary community?

Decades ago, Hong Kong was named a food paradise, but we don’t hear that as often as before. We like to work closely with other talented chefs in Hong Kong and together, be able to present the Hong Kong food scene as a whole. Not just for The Chairman, and not just for Chinese food, but for the city to be seen as a food paradise.

I hope that the food in Hong Kong can be one of the reasons for visitors to come but we cannot do that by ourselves. We’d like to do it with other restaurants in Hong Kong. That’s why we did some collaborations last year, with David Lai of Neighborhood and Vicky Cheng of VEA and Wing. We want to present the Hong Kong food scene as a whole. Hong Kong is still a food paradise. Come to Hong Kong. Spend a whole week here!

Now, how do I get a booking at The Chairman? 

I cannot get a booking myself! The restaurant is too small, that’s the problem. There are some customers that, whenever we open online bookings to the public, can always book. So I asked them what their secret was and they all said the same thing. They have a strategy. So, for example, we’ll open bookings from April to June, and when they get onto the website, they go straight to June and book lunch or a weekday dinner. Because if you focus on Friday, Saturday or Sunday in April or May, everyone is thinking the same. You need to think differently.

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