Inside the hyperlocal transformation of Hong Kong’s fine dining scene, as restaurants go green: from Mora’s soy creations to Sushi Zinc’s local seafood and the Regent’s best-selling honey cake

As the city’s restaurants delve deeper into sustainable practices, hyperlocal ingredients are helping to reduce footprints while creating incredible new dishes

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Chef Zinc Leung and his team. Photo: Sushi Zinc

Published: 12:45pm, 27 Feb 2025

As Hong Kong’s F&B industry looks to lower its food miles and adopt more sustainable practices, the city’s fine dining establishments are increasingly exploring their options when it comes to sourcing ingredients locally. That has meant adapting to ocean harvests from nearby waters or exploring the fertile terroirs of the New Territories. In Hong Kong, the most eco-conscious restaurants aren’t just using local ingredients, they’re using hyperlocal ingredients.

Opened in January 2022, Mora is local chef Vicky Lau’s second restaurant following Tate Dining Room. The concept was aimed squarely at reducing meat consumption and highlighting the versatility of soy, one of the building blocks of Chinese cuisine. Determined to create Mora’s offerings using ingredients of the utmost quality, Lau established An Soy, a line of products that are sold independently, as well as being ingredients adopted into recipes at Mora.

Sourced entirely in Hong Kong, An Soy uses non-GMO beans to make all-natural soy milk via hi-tech machinery, without compromising quality and at the same time reducing waste. The designated facility helps create different varieties of tofu – thick soy milk, tofu sheets and more – all produced without additives while preserving their natural rich consistency and texture.

“Because of the long history of soy milk production in Hong Kong, there’s a lot of outdated equipment, which tends to create diluted soy milk,” Lau explains. “To address this, we decided to invest in our own machinery to ensure complete control over the quality of the soy milk – which includes the sourcing of soybeans and filtered water, managing the pressure cooking and cooling processes, and maintaining optimal transportation conditions without the addition of preservatives.”

Mora’s mapo tofu which changes to reflect the seasonality of its ingredients. Photo: Mora

Three years since Mora’s opening, its mapo tofu remains one of the most popular dishes. Made with soft and firm tofu, as well as thawed frozen tofu, which yields a honeycomb texture that allows the numbing and spicy sauce to permeate, Lau’s creation is the ideal example of an all-local dish that truly wows.

Having grown up in Sai Kung with an interest in the sea and its umami-rich harvests, Zinc Leung has an enduring affinity for local seafood. That love is on full display at Sushi Zinc, his restaurant in Shau Kei Wan.