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Lifestyle100 Top Tables

How these Hong Kong chefs are doing Japanese food with a Cantonese twist

For generations, local diners expected Cantonese chefs to play supporting roles to a Japanese head chef – but now that is changing

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The claypot rice dish at Hong Kong’s Isseki Niaji melds Cantonese banqueting traditions with tastes of Osaka. Photo: Handout
Hei Kiu Au

The scene: a kappo counter in Wan Chai. A wok sits beside a binchotan grill; diners watch as one chef slices fish with surgical precision while another sends flames licking up the belly of a seasoned wok. Welcome to Isseki Niaji. Two traditions side by side, a single question hanging in the air: What does it mean to cook Japanese food in Hong Kong?

For decades, the answer was simple. Authenticity required a Japanese passport. The city’s top counters were headed by chefs trained in Tokyo, Osaka or Kyoto. Local cooks could assist, could spend years mastering the craft, but the face behind the counter was almost always imported from Japan.

Hongkongers have become accustomed to the idea that local chefs might be capable of integrating European cuisine into their cooking – the efforts of Chevalier Yau at Aera, Aven Lau at Épure and Vicky Cheng at Vea, to name just three, have all been celebrated. However, the notion that Japanese cuisine could be expertly understood by someone from outside Japan has been harder to accept.

Now, a new generation of Hong Kong chefs is quietly challenging that sensibility. Step into Isseki Niaji, for example, and the face at work behind the counter belongs to someone who grew up eating slow-simmered Cantonese soups. These local chefs may have mastered Japanese technique, but their cooking comes from their own culinary roots.

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