Ho Lee Fook was already legendary when I first moved to Hong Kong in 2015, and it continues to be today. Known by passersby for an imposing wall of golden lucky cats visible even from outside beyond the glass doors, the kitschy-cool decor mesmerizes all who dare enter with a hypnotic movement of their pulsating arms – up, down, up, down, up, down. As you descend the stairs down to the restaurant proper, the space that you see today is very different from what you would have observed when it first opened. Ho Lee Fook closed for renovations in 2021, following the departure of Chef Jowett Yu, and what you see today can only be described as what you would imagine a Chinese restaurant at The Continental to look like – I was surprised that I didn’t see John Wick seated at the corner booth.
Today, ArChan Chan is the Executive Chef at Ho Lee Fook. A luminary of Hong Kong dining, she was named as Tatler Dining’s Local Champion earlier this year. A powerful advocate for classic Cantonese cuisine, she is bringing Ho Lee Fook back to its roots. She is not interested in modernizing Chinese food, but rather looking to highlight all the qualities that make it unique. By focusing on quality ingredients, meticulous details and well-balanced flavor profiles, ArChan’s approach to her menu is ultimately a beautiful homage to her home, Hong Kong.
After starting her culinary career in Australia, where she laid down roots for 10 years, she went on to work in Singapore for three years before finally moving back to Hong Kong to take up the mantle of her current title at Ho Lee Fook. As we spent the afternoon with ArChan, watching her prepare a classic chicken dish that is traditionally served during holidays with her family, it was clear that the chef feels a deep connection to the food that she makes. Being able to watch her cook alone in Ho Lee Fook’s kitchen was somewhat meditative – it is vastly different from the hustle and bustle that you see during service hours. Here, ArChan is pensive and focused, each movement is methodical and measured but at the same time, also feels very natural and tranquil.
The atmosphere in the kitchen is relaxed. She is in her happy place. A small speaker plays a steady stream of Hong Kong music while she cooks, a sprawling variety that jumps from modern day pop songs, to golden oldies of the 1950s, to nostalgic bangers like Anita Mui’s 女人心 (one of my favorite Cantopop songs – my mom would listen to a lot of Anita Mui while I was growing up). As we captured images of ArChan dousing the chicken with hot liquid in a wok, smoke billowing around her on all sides, the contrast between the traditional cooking method and the chic modernity of our surroundings was somehow poetic. And so laid the foundations for an afternoon filled with learning about Cantonese cuisine, good conversation and good-er food. Read on to explore our conversation with ArChan about how food is connected to memory, the significance of Hong Kong’s live seafood scene and the importance of positivity.
LANG: As a chef, what is your food philosophy? How would you describe your approach to food?
ArChan Chan: I think it changed throughout my career. When you have more experience, when you're getting a bit more mature, to me it's really important to first show what the flavor of the ingredients is. Because I think the more I cook, the more I realize there's a reason why you want to use really good produce. At the end of the day, if you are preparing a dish with, say, tomatoes, then it should taste like tomato. All the other ingredients are enhancing the flavor. For the chicken dish I did today, we tried to source the best quality, the best-tasting chicken, because once you have that, you just have to do some light sauteing. If you like sand ginger, you pair it with sand ginger. The rest of the ingredients are making the eating journey enjoyable. I think that's number one.
Number two, I think food and memory go hand in hand. You know, “What do we want to achieve here?” Obviously, we want to create an experience where food is part of the experience where guests create memories – like, “Whenever I'm at Ho Lee Fook, not only is the music really good, but also the drinks and then this dish makes me feel like I’m connecting time.” And what I find really rewarding is when we present a certain dish, some guests will taste it and go, “Oh, that reminds me of my grandparents or my mom because she cooked this soup for me.” I think the fact that food can connect with memory, that’s an important part of my food philosophy.
L: You were recently named as Tatler Dining’s Local Champion 2023. What does it mean for you to represent Hong Kong dining?
AC: To be honest, I was really surprised [laughs]. I didn't expect it at all. I felt very lucky already to be part of the candidates, because all the rest of the nominees are superstars, you know. They’re my idols. I felt very honored, but also a sense of responsibility to have this title and to be able to contribute. I'm lucky to have gone overseas for 14 years to learn and then to come back as a local. I have that sense of responsibility to use my knowledge, to continue to push it forward.
In many Asian countries, it’s still [a bit frowned upon] to want to grow up to be a chef, right? You’re expected to be a doctor or a lawyer. So, I think it’s already a small majority of people who want to do this job with a passion and like me, who are able to get this [Local Champion] title. It's very empowering for me to have people start looking at me and the things that I do and I can continue to promote my love of Hong Kong. I think that is a great responsibility and I'm really honored.
L: So for someone who might be unfamiliar, how would you describe Cantonese cuisine and Hong Kong food culture?
AC: I think Cantonese cuisine focuses a lot on a balance of flavors. I was actually quite surprised to hear some people talking about how our cuisine has a lot of texture. But I think harmony is, to me, the most important one because if you think about Cantonese cuisine, you can probably have it everyday. If you like fried food, we have plenty of fried food. If you like cleaner food, we have steamed dishes. We have seafood, we have chicken, we have heavy flavors like black bean and chili, and also chicken mala hot pot. So to me, the variety of Cantonese cuisine is great. You can have it 10 days in a row and have very different flavors each time. It is very comforting.
L: Growing up, did your family celebrate the holidays? What sort of food would be served?
AC: It’s interesting because last night, I actually just had a family dinner. Now as an adult, I appreciate the wisdom of the lunar calendar. There are so many festivals – like you have 冬至 (Winter Solstice) and 團年 and Mid-Autumn Festival – and on all those days we’ve inherited a gathering together. As you start working, it can be hard to have family time together. So I like that our family will celebrate all these traditional holidays.
For Chinese New Year, on the first day for lunch we have a vegetarian meal and then when it's winter, we have hot pot together. Chicken has always been a key ingredient. It is very symbolic to a lot of Cantonese families because we always want to have chicken. Soup is another [immensely important dish] to me – soup is home. Especially because I was overseas for so many years, but I rarely came back to Hong Kong [during that time]. My grandparents or my mom would always make sure I had soup when I was home, so that's also very symbolic.
L: Actually, what's the symbolism of chicken in Cantonese culture?
AC: Chicken is symbolic of prosperity. It’s very humble, but it can provide life and sustenance. Whenever you cook for someone, you just have to have chicken.
L: As a chef, which dish best represents you? And why?
AC: If you ask anybody who works here [at Ho Lee Fook] what my favorite dish is, they’ll tell you it’s steamed razor clams with glass noodles and garlic [laughs]. I guess why this dish is so important to me is because first, it’s my favorite thing to eat but also because while I was in Australia, I couldn’t get razor clams there. It's a dish that also makes me realize how amazing the live seafood scene in Hong Kong is.
So when I came back to Hong Kong and reopened Ho Lee Fook, I was like, “Okay, I need to put razor clams on [the menu]. What am I going to do?” Because if I just do it with rice vermicelli and garlic, it’s just like any other dish in Hong Kong. This actually took a lot of time to think about. But also, I didn’t want to change it for the sake of changing it because to me, it’s the perfect way to eat razor clams. So all we have done is we made sure to get good quality razor clams and we perfect the steaming time. The rice vermicelli, the garlic – we looked at all the components of the dish and how we could make it the best.
I used to work in a Korean restaurant, so what I did to the dish was we aged garlic soy in-house and when something is fermented, you get a bit of acidity. So besides the normal soy sauce, we also put a little bit of the aged garlic soy sauce – what it does is it creates another layer of flavor but also with acidity, it keeps your appetite going. So what I hope with this dish is you can have 10 different varieties in 10 other restaurants, but I hope ours tastes the best for you. And you remember it. You don't have to know why because they look exactly the same but you go, “Oh this is really good.” That is my goal.
L: Food and style are often tied closely together, especially here in Hong Kong where the two interests often overlap. What is your relationship with style? And how do you use it to express yourself?
AC: I think, for me, my style is honesty. I like dressing myself to feel comfortable. To be honest, I'm horrible with trends [laughs]. I can still wear things that have been in my closet for 15 years. I think because of the type of person I am from my family, I'm a saver. For shoes, if they are still wearable and they are still comfortable, then I'll continue to wear them until I need a new pair. So my style is quite like a saver – that’s reflected in my food as well because we don't like to throw things away.
For example, we have duck and goose upstairs – sometimes we don't use the wings or the trimmings, so we will keep it to refresh our master stock. Some people can throw things away without feeling much and I guess I am not that type of person. So I'm quite bad sometimes when I have to attend an event and they have a dress code I'm like, “What should I do?” [laughs] Does that answer the question?
L: Yeah, of course. I like how you tied it into your food philosophy as well, because it really shows how everything is connected.
AC: Yeah so, for example, on the topic of honesty and simplicity, we have this dish on the menu – it’s this fried chicken called 炸子雞 and it is very common, right, with spring onion and ginger, but all that we’ve changed is using fresh sand ginger. For a home recipe, I also just use spring onion and ginger but here, we actually use fresh sand ginger instead of ginger, which is just a very minor tweak and it’s still a very honest dish, but we just changed the detail. So for me, it's also if I dress, I will just maybe have a very small detail that shows my personality.
L: Can you tell us more about the dish you chose to share today? Does it have any personal meaning to you? For someone eating this dish, what do you hope they experience?
Actually you know internationally, people know that chicken in Hong Kong is really good. I have a book called Hong Kong Local and when I wrote it, I realized that actually we have a lot of ways to cook chicken in Hong Kong. We love our chickens. Also, a lot of people do not know what sand ginger is 沙薑. So with sand ginger and chicken (沙薑雞), that's a very unique pairing and a very unique smell. In Southeast Asia, Thailand for example, they use a ginger called 高良薑 or galangals, so even with ginger they have a lot of different families.
Sand ginger in particular is very, very popular in Hong Kong. So what I want for this dish is obviously to just show that when you pick a good chicken, the flavor speaks for itself. You can see that the skin is not as fatty. What I want is for people to appreciate the flavor of the chicken and for people to not worry too much when they’re cooking it on their own. Because if you see how I did it, I kind of used a stripped down version of what we do for the restaurant – just water, salt and sugar. If you have a bit of spring onion or ginger trimmings, you can put it in if you'd like, or even a little bit of garlic or some ginger powder.
I want the cooking method to be very simple. While you're waiting for the chicken to cook, you can prepare your garnishes like some cucumber on the side and this looks very festive. I think cooking at home has become a luxury, because of the space or people worry about the preparation. I wanted to provide a simple recipe and hope that people can go, “Oh, actually, that's quite easy. I can do this dish at home as well.”
L: Yeah, I think that's the thing about Hong Kong – the space. And I think for me, also worrying about when a recipe needs an oven, like how do I cook this? But if you cook for someone – your family, people you care about – it does mean a lot.
AC: Yeah, yeah. And at the end of the day, if you are not comfortable with a knife, you can use scissors to cut the chicken, right? So it doesn't take too much of an effort. Depending if you have the interest, you can see when I break down the joints, it doesn't actually take too much effort.
L: I mean, you made it look very easy when you were breaking down the chicken. I'm not sure mine would look like that [laughs].
AC: [Laughs] Yeah, but if you eat at home, you can just have the whole drumstick, right? You don't even have to cut it, you can just, you know, use your hand and eat it. So I hope to be able to show a dish that is not just delicious, but also easy.
L: Okay, last question. What makes someone LANG?
AC: I think a person who can show you their real character when you have that first interaction with them. If you feel that person is not pretentious, you feel connected. I think when you feel connected with someone and they are just who they are and you feel very comfortable with that person, that's real beauty.
L: Authenticity.
AC: Yeah. Because I think when you feel that, the interesting thing is you then also feel, “I can also be real.” I can be casual. I can be who I am. This kind of energy feeds off each other. I think that's the real LANG. And another thing to me that's really important is being positive. I think a lot of people misunderstand the difference between positivity and happiness. You don't have to be happy all the time. You can be sad, it's okay to be sad. But if you are positive, that's what brings you back from the sadness to a happier place. So I think being positive is also LANG.
Photographer: Koon Chi Chung
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