A British-Canadian chef’s nod to Hong Kong childhood at 2-Michelin-star London restaurant

When it comes to cooking, chef Jeremy Chan refuses to be boxed in. At Ikoyi, the two-Michelin-star London restaurant he co-founded in 2017, his creations don’t sway towards West African cuisine, despite having borrowed the establishment’s name from his co-founder’s hometown in Lagos, Nigeria. Nor does the food overtly tell of Chan’s international background – born in Britain to a Chinese father and Canadian mother, he grew up between Hong Kong, Canada and the United States. Instead, it is a restaurant that firmly reflects Chan’s totality of cultures. Yet on the night of April 23, Chan, 39, went back to his roots and cooked a menu inspired by his memories of Hong Kong, the city where he spent the first eight years of his life. Goodbye finance, hello food After leaving a career in finance at age 26, Chan began to cook professionally, gaining experience through staging at restaurants such as Noma in Copenhagen and The French Laundry in California. Chan is famously reluctant to define his cooking style with a single culinary label. However, Chan surprises me with his response to the question of whether he has ever cooked a Hong Kong menu for the public before. “I think in a way, my menu [at Ikoyi] is a Hong Kong menu,” Chan says. “When I look at how I do things at Ikoyi, it’s very reminiscent of the flavours that I enjoyed growing up. If you ate the menu, you wouldn’t immediately think this is Cantonese food, this is Hong Kong, at all. But there are subtle references, like textures and sweetness.” While Ikoyi’s normal tasting menu shows Chan’s unconscious draw towards Cantonese flavours, this one-off dinner in collaboration with Champagne Salon displays more literal interpretations of the chef’s childhood, reinterpreting traditional flavours of Hong Kong. The one-off ‘Hong Kong’ menu The menu begins with a milky fish soup imbued with almond and vanilla, reminiscent of home-cooked Cantonese fish soups or broths often found in Hong Kong. Traditionally, this collagen-rich soup gets its creamy white colour from emulsifying fish fat into boiling water. Chan’s version is made by roasting turbot head bones and adding boiling water along with Shaoxing wine reduction, ginger, spring onion, chillies and peppercorn from Cameroon. To further enhance the soup’s milkiness, he blends in fresh almond milk infused with vanilla into the broth. The dish is served with a steamed piece of kohlrabi, a nod towards the winter melon that is often used in Chinese soups. A few days before the dinner, Chan posted a sneak peek: a photo of a singular chicken wing, with a spoon of foamed sauce layered towards the wing tip. In the caption, Chan thanked chef Daniel Calvert for the wing technique and inspiration. Calvert led Hong Kong’s Belon to a Michelin star in 2019, then opened Sezanne in Tokyo two years later, with the restaurant going on to earn three Michelin stars. “I’ve known Daniel for a long time and we exchange recipes from time to time,” Chan says. “I asked him about his chicken wing. He gave me some tips and we went from there.” This was not an ordinary chicken wing. “I grew up eating a lot of amazing chicken dishes in Hong Kong,” Chan says. “I think my favourite ones were cooked with a lot of salt, with very crispy skin, very minimal amount of meat and had this very heavily seasoned texture. And I wanted to recreate that idea. But then I also wanted to serve it to guests at Ikoyi who are used to our style of cooking with a lot of shellfish and offal.” The dish takes at least two to three days of meticulous preparation. The wing is first brined, deboned, and stuffed with a mousse made of sweetbreads and lobster. Then, it is blanched several times before getting iced and hung inside the dry-ageing chamber for about two days. Once the skin is dried, the wing is dipped in a vinegar and maltose solution and dried again, then smoked over rice, tea and sugar. Finally, the wing is deep-fried and glazed with an oil made from Mexican ancho chillies. “We glaze the chicken with the oil so it’s bright red. Cantonese aesthetic, but very Ikoyi taste,” he says. “It’s a unique recipe to us with some of the technique from Daniel’s repertoire.” Beyond the colour and flavour of this chicken wing, the combination of different proteins within the dish is also another homage to Hong Kong itself. “It’s a tribute to that kind of meat, fish and shellfish collaboration where you eat around the table in Hong Kong,” Chan says. “There isn’t really a logic or a reason, but you’ll have chicken feet and then you’ll have jellyfish, spare ribs, gizzards and duck tongue. [The chicken wing is] a memory of that idea of way of eating, but it’s also very opulent and celebratory to use sweetbreads and lobster.” His childhood place Though it has been years since Chan has returned to Hong Kong, it is clear that the city holds a special place in his heart. “Hong Kong is like my childhood place. Like, I don’t associate it with an industry or restaurant. I associate it with family, nostalgia and childhood,” Chan explains, adding that his father – who still lives in Hong Kong – is his guide when it comes to restaurants in the city. “He’s lived there his entire life. He doesn’t call himself a foodie, but he’s extremely clued up on what flavour and quality he likes,” he says. “I think a lot of people from Hong Kong are quite specific with their taste.” While Chan’s Hong Kong followers are hopeful that he will one day do a pop-up in the city, it is more likely you will find him eating at your local cha chaan teng than working behind the pass. “If I come to Hong Kong, I will never work,” he says. “I’ll just come as a visitor – I have too much nostalgia and memories from Hong Kong.”

A British-Canadian chef’s nod to Hong Kong childhood at 2-Michelin-star London restaurant

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Jeremy Chan spent his first eight years in Hong Kong. His menu on April 23 for two-Michelin-star restaurant Ikoyi, in London, reflected that

Goodbye finance, hello food

Jeremy Chan spent his first eight years in Hong Kong. His menu on April 23 for two-Michelin-star restaurant Ikoyi, in London, reflected that