I’m a British chef married to a Cantonese woman, raising half-Asian kids in a home where my mother-in-law cooks beautiful Chinese food every day. I didn’t come here to ‘reinvent’ anything — I came because I love Hong Kong’s food culture.

And that’s exactly why I want to bring something new to the table. Just like pasta travelled from China to Italy, and potatoes crossed oceans to become European staples, every great cuisine was once something unfamiliar. Hong Kong has always been a place of mixing and borrowing. So why should we stop evolving now?

Yet too often I still hear, ‘You’re British — why isn’t there fish and chips?’ or ‘You’re not Spanish, so how can you run a tapas bar?’

Those questions come from a place of love for authenticity, which I respect. But they also quietly box us in. Diners here eat out almost every day, treating restaurants like a hobby rather than a meal. They crave the ‘real thing’ — the chef from that country, the signature dish that never changes. They say they want new experiences, yet they arrive with an Instagram photo demanding the exact same plate they saw online. That fear of ordering the ‘wrong’ dish makes it hard for any restaurant to evolve its menu, and it quietly limits the creativity that could make Hong Kong’s dining scene truly world-class.

As a chef, what excites me most is giving people their own discovery.

I want you to walk out thinking, ‘That was the best thing I’ve eaten in months’ — not because an influencer or critic told you to order it, but because you experienced it yourself.

Before Instagram, we waited for Fay Maschler or Jay Rayner to tell us where to go. Now everything’s a click away, so diners chase someone else’s experience instead of creating their own. They want the signature dish that’s safe and familiar, not the dish no one else has tried yet.

But eating out should be an adventure. When a guest sits at my counter and says, ‘Chef, just cook for me,’ that’s when the real magic happens — for both of us.

The good news is that the tide is already turning. Lower rents are finally letting chefs open small, personal restaurants for a fraction of what they used to cost. Places like Flat Iron and the team around Johnny Glover are proving you can build a successful business for one or two million Hong Kong dollars instead of five or six. With tiny overheads, they’re free to experiment, and if something doesn’t work, they simply move on — no crushing debt holding them back.

I’m also seeing more and more young local chefs stepping up. Talented Hong Kong boys and girls who trained at Amber, Caprice, and L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon are now running their own kitchens, blending Cantonese ingredients with Western technique.

They’re confident, they’re creative, and they’re exactly the bridge this city needs. The iconic Jimmy’s Kitchen showed Hong Kong almost a hundred years ago that a Beef Stroganoff could become part of our story. It’s time we let the next chapter be written the same way — with proper plates of food that taste incredible, not just look perfect on a screen.

So here’s my simple hope: next time you see a dish you don’t recognize, don’t ask, ‘What is this?’ Ask ‘What does this taste like?’

That small shift might be all it takes to let Hong Kong’s food scene grow into something even more exciting than it already is.