How a chef created a one-of-a-kind culinary oasis hidden in Hong Kong’s Luk Chau village on Lamma Island
The daughter of acclaimed home-grown interior designer Steve Leung has created her own invite-only culinary sanctuary called OOAK Lamma
It’s the last Friday in September, and a very good Friday at that. The oppressive humidity of summer has finally broken. The sky is coloured a perfect azure blue. I’m in idyllic Luk Chau village, breathing in the soul-cleansing sea air on the patio of OOAK Lamma, feeling a million miles away from civilisation – although I’d left the city behind a mere 15 minutes ago.
The first clue is in its name – an acronym for “one of a kind” – chosen because chef-owner Stefanie Leung believes that every time she hosts people at her culinary project, it’s a one-off, never-to-be-repeated experience. “The people are different each time, the weather is different each time,” she says. “Each moment is one of a kind.”
Leung, in her mid-30s, is in the enviable position of presiding over one of the most picturesque private kitchens in the city, nestled within a seaside residence conceptualised by her father, the acclaimed home-grown interior designer Steve Leung of Steve Leung Design Group.
Given its rural setting, OOAK feels like it could sit comfortably amid the likes of the now-closed Fäviken in the Swedish countryside, Harbor House Inn in remote northern California, and KOKS on the windswept Faroe Islands; that is, if it were open to the public.
Instead, Leung welcomes only friends and family, and by extension, their friends. And what a lucky lot they are. For starters, the surroundings are stunning. The typical journey to OOAK begins in Aberdeen Harbour, where, amid the bustle of sampans and kaitos, diners board a sleek, low-slung ferry scented with a bespoke aroma from local studio BeCandle. The ferry then sails due west into the setting sun, the buildings of the city rapidly peeling away as the watercraft plies its way across an open shipping channel. A sense of calm and quietude pervades, along with an unshakeable feeling that this is not the Hong Kong we know.
Soon, the floating rafts of a mariculture farm cloistered by a tranquil bay come into view, followed by a whitewashed house – simple in form and starkly minimalist – with a private jetty perched on the rocky coastline. On its patio, waiting patiently, is Leung, dressed in starched chef’s whites and smiling serenely. The sense of arrival is unmistakable.
