Celebrity Life
Chef Ricardo Chaneton on his Passions and Contemporary French Restaurant Mono
Today, the descriptor “passionate chef” can refer to one of a number of different types. We’ve met the serious but socially awkward chef; the angry, aggressive, maybe even somewhat alcoholic chef; and then there's the narcissistic chef who basks in the celebrity limelight. But sometimes, thank goodness for sometimes, we come across a chef who’s sincere, genuine and fuelled simply by a deep love of food. For me, these chefs are like culinary gold dust and I recently met one in the form of Venezuelan chef Ricardo Chaneton.
Explaining energetically and elaborating expansively with his hands, Chaneton is, to say the least, expressive. He’s every bit the South American; confident, but also uncompromisingly honest. This is reflected in the food he serves at his new contemporary French restaurant Mono, a co-venture with JIA Group’s Yenn Wong, which officially opened in Central in December.
"My approach to contemporary French cuisine is different," says Chaneton. "It comes with a South American background. It’s unique." The reason for the focus on French cuisine is found in Chaneton’s culinary background. He was most recently executive chef for Petrus at Island Shangri-La, Hong Kong, where he spent almost four years showcasing his creative French cuisine. Prior to that, he was at the three-Michelin-star Mirazur in Menton, France (which bagged the number one slot on the S.Pellegrino World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for 2019). This is where he spent seven years training and working with acclaimed chef-owner Mauro Colagreco, considered one of the most influential chefs on the planet. "Mauro taught me not to be scared of my feelings," Chaneton says. "I remember seeing him cry in an interview. When he talks about something that touches his heart, he will show it. This is something I want to bring here."
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Chaneton has a lot to say of his cuisine and one immediately gets a sense of his eagerness to show people what he’s about. "My cuisine is all about feelings. It’s about how you feel, and how the people in front of you feel. It’s full of emotions." This is his rationale for an open kitchen too. It allows people to see faces, creating a sense of open-mindedness and honesty between a chef and his guests.
I ask about the name Mono, and if the restaurant really is inspired by the Japanese and Korean art movement Mono-ha. "Yes, the art at the front [of the restaurant] is Mono-ha," he says, referring to the oil-paint and wood-panel installation Inside and Outside of Lattice created by Kishio Suga, one of the movement’s founding members. The work explores interdependency between natural and industrial materials, and is echoed in the restaurant’s design with elements of stainless steel against wood and concrete alongside marble.
Over and above this, Chaneton explains that "mono" is universal and a word or term that most will understand as a prefix that signifies one single thing. "That’s why we have one menu, one counter, one message to convey."
The concise tasting menu has four sections that encapsulate Chaneton’s cuisine: Origins, which represents his background; Traditions, those he honours and respects; Savoir Faire, a showcase of his skills; and finally, Heritage, his memories, in particular of his late grandfather.
Chaneton also defines his menu as seasonal, "but just to be clear, when I say seasonal, I mean to say that my cuisine follows the French seasons. So for instance, there are no tomatoes from France in winter. So in this restaurant, you will never see a tomato right now."
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"We misuse the words fresh and seasonal. It isn’t always. But I can tell you straight away that my cuisine is definitely seasonal and 100 percent fresh, because I don’t like to use freezers in my kitchen. Only for the pastry and ice cream. which makes it all the more challenging."
Some items are sourced from Spain and Italy, as they share the same seasonal timings – but more importantly, connect with his own background. Chaneton grew up with a mixture of European and South American influences. As a result, he speaks five languages: Spanish, Italian, English, Portuguese and French. "But if you count music and food, then I speak seven languages." He’s also attempting to learn Cantonese and makes the effort with his kitchen team. "They understand me," he says, and provides some examples of his orders to his local team, displaying fairly accurate pronunciation. "I’m trying. It’s a beginning, but I don’t want to stop there. I want to be able to explain my dishes to a guest in Cantonese. That’s my dream."
One of the highlight dishes on Chaneton’s menu is the Miéral pigeon/mole. "The flavours in this come from my childhood and my roots," he explains. In an homage to the traditions of French cuisine, he takes a whole Miéral pigeon from Bresse in France, ages it in-house for five days, and roasts it on the bone in the classic manner before serving it medium-rare with a confit pigeon leg inside a liver-mousse bon bon. Meanwhile, the homemade mole sauce is created with 26 spices and, as he puts it, "is like a good wine", with the mole continually developing on the palate. All the individual spices and ingredients reveal themselves as you keep tasting. It’s a stunning dish, both interesting and exciting, flawlessly combining French and South American flavours.
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We talk about his other passion, music, and Chaneton’s eyes light up. "I play cuatro, guitar, drums and piano. I also recently purchased a saxophone – a small practice one. One that doesn’t make too much noise, so I don’t get thrown out of my building," he says, laughing.
"For me, art is food, food is art. Music is art too. And it’s also a language. When you speak music and you speak food, you can communicate better. This is how you open doors. It’s the key to culture, and it’s a beautiful thing to communicate with others."
It suddenly becomes clear. We’ve been talking about Chaneton’s many different passions, but they are all connected – one and the same. It’s one passion that encompasses and embraces them all. A mono passion. And one definitely worth getting to know.
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Discovering A New Era of Sushi at The Araki Hong Kong
There’s something wonderfully poetic about the art of sushi. As I watch one of the world’s most celebrated sushi masters at work in his new restaurant, I’m captivated by his movements.
Chef Mitsuhiro Araki takes his knife to the tuna with precision. He swiftly dabs on wasabi and begins a dance-like motion of pressing and flipping rice and fish, before gently brushing the final product with soy sauce. Finally, it’s placed delicately from his hand into mine, and eaten in one bite, setting off its own beautiful haiku dedicated to flavour.
My love of sushi knows no end, especially when it comes to sushi as good as Araki’s. In fact, I could probably smother his sushi with superlatives until Sunday next week, but what I really want to tell you is how he’s changing sushi and what it means to take it to the next level.
Araki’s style of sushi is Edomae, a 200-year-old tradition where Edo, the ancient name for Tokyo, and mae, meaning “in front of”, references a traditional use of local ingredients from around Tokyo Bay. Edomae also points to the methods of preservation, as refrigeration technology had not then been invented, so sushi chefs developed techniques to prolong the shelf life of seafood, while retaining and enhancing its flavour.
The traditional Chinese technique is to dry seafood in the sun, but the Edomae way is to pickle, marinate, simmer or steep in broth and sauces. It’s then served as sushi, atop rice characterised by red vinegar and its subtle savoury taste.
Today, Araki remains deeply respectful of this philosophy and translates its traditions to create a new cuisine that makes use of local produce, wherever in the world he happens to be. In Tokyo, he mostly uses local ingredients or tuna from the Japan Sea, while in London wherever possible he sources seafood from Scotland, Cornwall and other British waters. It’s all about preserving – both the traditions and fish stocks – through sustainable methods.
To meet Araki, I venture out to his new restaurant, which is tucked away in the refurbished heritage building House 1881 in Tsim Sha Tsui. Like several other high-end sushi restaurants in Hong Kong, it has an interior with elements of Zen, its 12 seats surrounding a blonde-wood bar at the centre. It also offers omakase – or the chef’s menu – in two sittings. It’s not until I meet the sushi master that I notice a real difference here.
Soft-spoken, he smiles kindly before bringing out Marty Lau, his British-born Chinese chef and protégé who currently runs The Araki in London, to translate. The trust and respect between the two reveal their closeness.
“Previous generations of chefs have believed that sushi can only be made by Japanese people,” pronounces Araki. “I want that idea to disappear. The sushi chef shouldn’t be judged by his nationality or his skin colour, but rather by his soul.”
This rings true in his own team. With a cosmopolitan mix of apprentices from places such as mainland China,Hong Kong, the UK and Poland, he’s evidently not like other traditionalists of Japanese sushi. “It doesn’t matter if the skills don’t come naturally – time will solve that,” he says. “The real question is whether you can last that time.” As proof, he’s closed The Araki in London for two weeks so the team can fly in to help him prepare for the opening in Hong Kong.
When asked about his inspiration, Kyushu-born Araki tells me it began with a grandfather who worked for the Japanese consular service as a Western chef. This intrigued the youthful Araki, and after high school he took the opportunity to train as a Western chef too, only to find that he was asked to cook Japanese food instead.
In 1990 he moved to Australia, where he found an abundance of chefs who were inspired by Japanese cuisine. It was then that he
recognised the full potential of Japanese cuisine and set his sights on mastering it. Before long, he became more serious and chose the most revered – and arguably most difficult – path: that of becoming a sushi chef.
He achieved this at Izumi in Tokyo’s southwest district of Meguro, where he trained under the restaurant’s grandmaster for almost a decade. After that, it was the legendary Niitsu Takeaki – sometimes referred to as the Sushi Emperor – who polished and prepared Araki for success. In 2000, he opened his own restaurant in Setagaya and 10 years later moved the restaurant to Ginza, where it almost immediately gained three Michelin stars.
Never one to settle, Araki decided in 2013 to move to London and three years later the London outpost was awarded its first Michelin star. After two more years it had gained three.
Araki now turns to art for inspiration, as well as scenery and music – that is, anything beautiful. According to Lau, “Master always teaches his apprentices that anything that’s beautiful to you should be a source of great inspiration. After that it’s about how you can make people feel the same way as you did at that precise moment through your craft.”
I asked about the Michelin stars that have followed Araki from Ginza to London, and whether he thinks they’ll now follow him to Hong Kong. “If you can get a star, of course it’s nice to have. It’s a reward,” he said. “For me, the real stars are the customers. It starts with one customer, and then two, and you keep building until you have six months of a fully booked restaurant. But it will always start from that one customer.”
I began to understand how Araki sees the importance of return customers. “If you can convince them,” he said, “they’ll take that experience away. It stays with them. That’s the most rewarding.”
In Hong Kong, Araki’s search for high-level local ingredients continues, and so far he’s discovered items that will be familiar to locals here. One example is a dish created with three Chinese delicacies, a combination of Japanese dashi with bird’s nest and fish maw that makes for a lush and thick sauce, full of umami and collagen. It’s cooked to the perfection that even a local Chinese would approve of and then topped with tender slices of local abalone.
Although Araki’s technique and skills are already at a level that warrant Michelin stars, it’s still exciting for him. “I’m still studying the culture, people, food, produce and how it’s all interconnected” he says. “There’s still so much to discover.”
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Enjoy Festive Feasts Featuring the Sea’s Bounty at Nanhai No. 1
Premium seafood has long been the centrepiece of a quintessential Chinese feast. So when it comes to festive feasting in Hong Kong, it's no wonder contemporary Chinese restaurant Nanhai No. 1 is offering menus brimming with fresh seafood. Three menu options take guests from Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and New Years Eve and feature high quality dishes and seafood throughout.
Inspired by the great Ming dynasty Chinese naval explorer Zheng He and named after his 15th-century 'treasure fleet' ship, Nanhai No. 1 makes use of fresh seafood daily. Sourced directly from the South China Sea, all luxury seafood dishes are prepared and presented to reflect their distinct contemporary Chinese cuisine, with accents and flavours from South East Asia coming through too. From roasted, steamed, stir fried or even baked, there are a number of dishes for guests to choose from.
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Located in Tsim Sha Tsui, the 200-seat restaurant holds a spacious interior with the Victoria Harbour's iconic skyline acting as a stunning backdrop for guests. What's more, the design echoes the restaurant's concept with historical maritime artefacts. Guests can follow the ancient trading routes with maps of Zheng He’s voyage, along with an impressive model of the original Nanhai ship. Guests can also enjoy pre or post-dinner drinks at the Eye Bar which offers cocktails, wines and spirits, along with its signature seafood bites.
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Festive Feasts
Guests are invited to dine with a menu of their choice, all of which feature a variety of seafood dishes. From a Nanhai style Shark's fin soup in a hot clay pot and succulent King prawn served in bang sauce, to tenderly Braised whole abalone, Crispy king crab, Deep fried lobster and also, crowd-pleasing items such as Kagoshima Wagyu. Wine suggestions with each menu are also available. Guests that make a reservation and prepay by 10 December 2019 will also be able enjoy a 10% early bird offer.
Menu A: HK$680 per person -- wine suggestion: Chateau Bourgneuf, Pomerol 2012
Menu B: HK$880 per person -- wine suggestion: Dom Pérignon 2009
Menu C: HK$1,180 per person -- wine suggestions: Jinpin Xijiu (Chinese spirit)
All menus require a minimum of 2 people.
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Getting to The Root of Roganic Chef Simon Rogan’s Culinary Consciousness
It wasn't until I boarded my plane from Hong Kong to London and found myself thinking retrospectively, as one does, about my life choices that I realised how similar I am to Roganic. We’re both born and bred in London and then, very naturally, we leapt across land and sea from one food capital to another and planted ourselves at the quieter end of Hong Kong’s Causeway Bay.
But before I bore you with my life story or delve into the subject of Roganic, let’s take this back to 2002, when acclaimed British chef Simon Rogan, who’s worked with the likes of Jean Christophe Novelli, Marco Pierre White and John Burton Race, opened his first nature-inspired restaurant L’Enclume in Cartmel, a village on the southern edge of England’s Lake District.
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Chef Simon Rogan at Our Farm[/caption]
Grounded in his enthusiasm for sourcing from the natural world, Rogan found that farming and foraging ingredients of the highest quality meant doing so organically and locally. And there’s nothing quite as local as your own 5-hectare organic farm nearby. Named Our Farm, it continues to supply Rogan’s restaurants with organic produce – including herbs, vegetables, flowers and fruits – which he incorporates into his constantly changing seasonal menus. Soon enough, his forward-thinking, sometimes unusual but always natural, British cuisine earned him accolades, including two Michelin stars and five AA Rosettes.
Thereafter, Rogan embarked on several other independent ventures. Opened in 2008, the informal restaurant and bar Rogan & Co, which is just a stone’s throw from L’Enclume, was also awarded a Michelin star. And then there’s Roganic, a pop-up-turned-restaurant located just north of London’s Oxford Street. Reflecting similar elements and thought processes, Roganic is an evolution of L’Enclume that opened in 2016 and, since 2017, runs alongside Aulis London, a development kitchen and chef’s table that his team uses to experiment and get creative with new dishes. Fast-forward to this year, and two of those concepts have since launched in Hong Kong, with Roganic and Aulis opening a month apart earlier this year.
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Beef, oyster and seaweed custard[/caption]
A meal at Roganic comprises long or short tasting menus of 10 to 16 courses of small plates and bites. In short, it’s a showcase of nature’s best, cooked, prepared and presented in a fresh and evocative way. Rogan himself describes it as “ingredient-led, naturally based cuisine focusing on flavours that are harmonious and balanced with a strong message of seasonality and bio diversity”.
It all sounds very technical and biodynamic, but boils down to his brilliance in simple enhancement – a dying art of kitchen sorcery in today’s over-elaborate culinary culture. At Roganic, no camouflage, cover-ups or overcompensation are needed. Instead, beauty is found in wholesome and unrefined ingredients, heightened in flavour by skill and technique alone. His tendency to lean towards pickling or fermenting, compressing or intensifying, is juxtaposed with natural sweetness and delicacy, displaying his innate ability to strike a balance between the two.
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Fresh produce come directly from Our Farm[/caption]
“Flavour is everything,” says Rogan, “and to achieve this you need to have an uncompromising approach to ingredient collection and production – and the stories behind them.” Of course, presentation and style are key too, and his modern approach is colourful yet clean and unfussy. “I’m a firm believer in restraint and letting the flavours of these amazing ingredients speak for themselves,” he adds.
As Rogan selects ingredients as fresh and as local as he can get them, the major difference between his London and Hong Kong outposts is in the produce he uses. In London, it goes without saying that the freshest produce comes from his own farm, but as he doesn’t have one here he instead picks the best ingredients he can find from local organic farmers.
“Before opening Roganic Hong Kong, we spent a lot of time researching organic farms in the area – in the New Territories specifically,” he says. “We’re now working with some incredible suppliers, but the produce can differ from what’s available in England. To combat this, we adapt each dish to suit seasonality and availability.”
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The Evogro at Roganic Hong Kong[/caption]
As for producing it himself, Rogan does so with Evogro; an indoor plant-growing system. If you visit Roganic Hong Kong, you’ll notice the smart boxes or farms on-site, drenched in red and blue LED lighting to promote growth, as well as hydroponics and video monitoring for ingredients such as microgreens and herbs. This season, he tells us, the very best ingredients he’s sourced in Hong Kong are fresh turnips, gem lettuce, amaranth greens and sweetcorn, whereas in London the finest beetroot, cabbages, tomatoes and nasturtiums are available.
A seasonal highlight of his current Hong Kong menu is a dish of leek, turnip and yellow chicken – the breast of the latter is cooked to tender and moist perfection before being paired with a terrine, cooked-down leek and an earthy turnip purée. Berkswell pudding – a savoury English bread- and-butter pud – is an easy favourite, too. Bouncy and comforting, it’s served with sweet birch-sap syrup and generously topped with finely grated aged Berkswell cheese.
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Sweetcorn tart[/caption]
Over in London, a seasonal showcase makes use of Cornish duck breast and charred cabbage brightened by a vibrant beetroot sauce. The sweetcorn tart – crisp pastry filled with creamy, smoked-eel emulsion and topped with barbecued and lightly pickled sweetcorn – is notable too.
Having visited both outposts within the space of two weeks, I can clearly see why Roganic works so well in London and Hong Kong. In both, the hushed tones of a high-end establishment are non-existent – and by “high- end”, I mean the quality of food, not the price. The cuisine feels real, for want of a better word, and there’s a sincerity in Rogan’s resolve to show you the food he knows and loves. Ultimately, his desire to reemphasise the connection between food and nature doesn’t just come to life in all the dishes he creates – it succeeds spectacularly.
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