How Korean-American celebrity chef Akira Back’s family inspires new Hong Kong restaurant

Before becoming a chef and restaurateur with more than 30 venues in major cities around the world – including his new eponymous restaurant at The Henderson in Hong Kong’s Admiralty neighbourhood – Akira Back was an extremely picky eater. “I didn’t like kimchi until I was 26,” says the Korean-American chef, who was born in Seoul and moved with his family to Aspen, in the US state of Colorado, when he was 13. “My nickname when I was growing up was ‘Peach’, because that was the thing I ate the most: peaches, or peanut butter sandwiches.” He admits he never thought of being a chef growing up; sports were his obsession. “I wanted to be a baseball player. I was unbelievably good,” he says. “I always thought, if I had never moved to America, I really truly believe [I would have made it in] baseball.” However, the sudden change in environment set into motion a chain of events that led Back to becoming the global celebrity chef he is today. Despite feeling as though he and his family were the only Asians in Aspen – one of America’s most famous ski resort towns – the young Back quickly adapted, if only to fit in. “I did snowboarding because I wanted to learn English,” he says. “I saw these people [doing it], they’re so cool, right? Mohawks, anarchy, leather jackets … blond, blue eyes. How could I be friends with them?” He picked up snowboarding instantly, something he credits to having extremely strong legs from playing baseball and to “cycling an hour and a half to school each day” back in Korea. He not only gained friends and a girlfriend through snowboarding, but also a lucrative sponsorship contract, which made him one of the first Koreans to go professional in the sport in the US. Then came a whirlwind of international travel, competitions and fame. He even starred in extreme snowboarding films. But when his sponsors started piling on the pressure to commercialise his success, he chose to wrestle control back by withdrawing from the scene. “I didn’t want to do it,” he says. “It became more serious. I [started snowboarding] because I really wanted to learn English, I wanted to be different and I wanted to be cool. I never really thought that I wanted to make a career out of it.” In Aspen, Back and his snowboarding friends would frequent a Japanese sushi restaurant called Kenichi, by chef Kenichi Kanada, after training. Back was so intrigued by the chef’s approach that he asked to join his team. Up until this point, Back’s family had been supportive of his endeavours – they even turned a blind eye when he skipped classes – he was enrolled in the prestigious Colorado Rocky Mountain School, with its direct path to good universities – to shred on the slopes and pursue his snowboarding dreams. But when he decided to throw away his professional sports career to become a chef, his father was not having it. “My father decided, when I started cooking, to stop talking to me,” Back says. “He knew he couldn’t give me his blessing. “When I said ‘I want to be a chef’, he laughed so hard. He said, ‘You’ve never even touched a knife in your life.’” He was right. Emphasising the point, Back, the picky eater known as “Peach”, quickly gained another nickname after entering Kanada’s kitchen: “Epoxy”, a kind of glue. “Because I always cut my finger, and I’d have to put glue on it [to seal the wound],” he says, laughing. “Every day, I’m bleeding, and I cannot cook. They’d give me vegetables to clean, or I’d clean dishes, and I’d still get cut.” Nevertheless, Back persisted, and three years later, his father started to talk to him again. “I think he saw me enjoying cooking, but I did not enjoy it for three years at all. I hated it.” The work was gruelling, not least because of Kanada’s exacting standards. Back says he would be yelled at and told to “respect the rice”. Even cleaning vegetables had its own specific method. “You’re young, you think everything they’re doing is being done on purpose to make you miserable, right? You’d never think that now,” he says, adding that the tough training at least gave him good stories to tell. A few decades on, having established his own restaurant empire, Back now thinks he has the “coolest job ever”. Apart from his Hong Kong opening, he has high-profile projects soon launching in Toronto, Canada; Rome and Florence in Italy; and Montana in the US. His ultimate dream is to open his own hotel. “I want to do something that is me. I want [the hotel] to be a little bit more Korean feeling, but old, like how I grew up. You know, rice paper, wood, but modern. I don’t want [it] to be in the city. I want it in the mountains, or the beach.” Despite Back’s love of nature, his outpost in the heart of Hong Kong is a source of pride. The interior, designed by Hong Kong-based firm AB Concept, features floor-to-ceiling windows and an almost gilded-birdcage-like structure that flows from top to bottom, with pearl-like strands providing soft light above, and organic curves rendered through marble and rich fabrics. It may look like a high-end establishment, but Back insists the vibe is anything but prim and proper. “I want to tell [guests] that, ‘Hey, this is a beautiful space, but take it easy. Whatever you want to wear, it’s OK,’” he says. “I don’t want to be too stuck up. The whole theory is that everyone can come here, mingle with their friends or whatever, and the menu is very easy to read. It’s like, OK, there’s chicken. I don’t need to read 50 words for chicken. “The last thing I want is you coming here stressed, because eating food should not be stressful.” It is no surprise then that some of the most successful dishes on the menu are closely linked to Back’s family. The bibimbap, for example, is made using his mother Young Hee’s recipe. In the restaurant’s version, Back says, the usual gochujang (fermented chilli paste) is sautéed until it gains a roasted, smoky flavour. Dashi is also added to create a looser, wetter texture than most bibimbap that diners might be accustomed to. “Some people may judge that, because it’s not the traditional bibimbap. But that’s how I ate it,” Back says. He believes in context and storytelling. The 48-hour braised Wagyu short rib – based on another one of his mother’s recipes, for classic galbi-jjim – is served with a quail’s egg, as it would have been during his mother’s time when chicken eggs were not so readily available. “My mom used to cook it well-done for me,” he says of the unusual approach to preparing the egg. “When you eat it, maybe you’ll feel like the chef doesn’t know how to cook the egg, or that it’s overcooked. But I want them to eat every single thing and understand my life journey. “This is what I eat, and this is my favourite. I just want to share. When I tell my story, everybody loves it.” It is not only his mother’s recipes that have pride of place in all of Back’s restaurants – her art is also a key identifier across his culinary empire. Her colourful abstract paintings with powerful brushstrokes have become a hallmark of Akira Back restaurants, adorning walls, menu covers and even coasters. One of Back’s favourite pieces, on display at multiple venues, depicts a tiger sleeping in the mountains. His mother painted it based on a dream she had before he was born – in Korean culture, this is known as taemong, a dream-based prophecy. The symbolism is apt: Back was born in 1974, the Year of the Tiger, and the mountains have long given him solace and led him to where he is today. The painting will soon take pride of place at Back’s soon-to-open restaurant at the One&Only Moonlight Basin Resort in Big Sky, Montana – his first establishment in an alpine location. “You know, the more I open [restaurants], the more I enjoy it,” Back says. “I actually enjoy it more every year. “I keep chasing my dream.”

How Korean-American celebrity chef Akira Back’s family inspires new Hong Kong restaurant

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Picky eater turned top chef Akira Back shares how his restaurant in The Henderson is about telling his family story in a stress-free setting

Picky eater turned top chef Akira Back shares how his restaurant in The Henderson is about telling his family story in a stress-free setting