Secrets of a US$35 soy sauce sun-dried and double fermented in Hong Kong the old-fashioned way
A family-run business for four generations, Tai Ma Sauce still makes its products according to tradition, but has its eye firmly on the future
His wife, Lai Chi-wan, is busy serving one customer while apologising to another for the wait. Their son, Brian Chau Ka-wai, has just returned to the busy shop after doing his morning delivery run.
Tai Ma’s store in Kwun Tong, an industrial district of East Kowloon in Hong Kong, is packed with more than just shoppers: shelves are lined with a variety of soy sauces, below which is a wall of neatly stacked jars of fermented bean curd; various soybean pastes – sweet, spicy and salty – are on display in large containers. Chilli oil, satay sauce and a selection of dried goods are among the many products to be found in this tiny shop.
Tai Ma started with Brian Chau’s great-grandfather, who owned a grocery store in Guangzhou. “Everyone who had a grocery store back then would stock the ‘seven necessities’: firewood, rice, oil, salt, sauce, vinegar and tea. They would make and sell their own sauces,” Brian Chau says. “Soy sauce was something a lot of people knew how to make at home; it wasn’t something created by professionals.”
When his great-grandfather moved to Hong Kong more than 60 years ago, he found a drying yard in Sheung Shui in which to continue the sauce-making business. A factory for producing and bottling was later opened in San Po Kong.
While commercial varieties take just days to produce, a bottle of Tai Ma soy sauce made in the traditional way takes 18 to 20 months from start to finish.