Richard Feldman
RICHARD Feldman is chairman of the Lan Kwai Fong Association so it seemed natural to get together for a chat in Lan Kwai Fong. We dithered for a while about a meeting place and Feldman eventually suggested the corner outside Al's Diner prior to a walkabout. But it was too cold to loiter and I was desperate for coffee so we went inside Al's and ordered breakfast. Every time someone walked through the door, like a cleaner or a lettuce-deliverer, Feldman said hello and they said, 'Hello boss'. After a while I asked him what, exactly, his relationship was with Al's and he said, 'Er, I own it.' Then he laughed a very typical Feldman laugh (that is to say, loud and infectious) and added, 'That doesn't trip off the tongue lightly, I can tell you.' Such moments of bashfulness are not, his many friends will agree, entirely characteristic of Feldman who is a party-enhancer if ever there was one. I hesitate to write here that he is hilarious, partly because that's almost impossible to convey in print and partly because, human nature being what it is, you will almost certainly read the rest of this piece determined to find him the least amusing person of whom you have ever heard. So let me just say that on the several social occasions on which I'd met him before this interview, he made all the people within earshot laugh.
Funny people, of course, can be a trial when it's just the two of you first thing in the morning but Feldman managed to be lively without being exhausting. He'd been up until 5 am, entertaining friends over from New York, and talking to his father in Montreal, which seemed a typical combination: he loves to socialise and he loves his family. Most people, when they're being interviewed, give the impression that they were accidentally spawned, so reluctant are they to mention their relatives, but Feldman refers to his constantly.
He adores his grandmothers, one in France and one in Canada. 'They are fabulous, positive people, phenomenally independent and an absolute inspiration in my life,' he declares (mealy-mouthed, half-hearted assertions are not a Feldman characteristic). When he goes to Canada twice a year 'there's laughter all the time, it's really a time of celebration'.
He is half-Jewish, half-French Catholic 'so there's going to be a lot of food in there'. The odd thing is that he's vegetarian and has been, astoundingly, since he was eight. No meat, no chicken, no fish. Eggs? 'No, unless they're in cakes. Hey, I may be a vegetarian but I'm not an idiot.' What's even more amazing is that he only ever cooks carnivorous meals. 'Listen, I'm not here to tell other people what to do. My focus when people come to dinner is to make them happy.' This is the Feldman bottom line. When he went to Vassar to study dramatic literature, he threw himself into student activities, introduced dorm dinner parties, was the director of food service's personal assistant, managed a bar and a restaurant and became president of the student body. After he graduated, he backpacked around the world and stopped off in Hong Kong to visit a student friend.
That was in 1988 when he was 23. He says that the moment he stepped off the plane ('I remember it was a cool, dry day - boy, did I get suckered in'), he decided this was where he belonged. He has just been granted permanent residency and when he heard, he began to cry in front of aghast onlookers at Immigration. 'Everyone thought I'd been evicted, I was so overwhelmed by my own reaction. It's an amazing thing when you're so happy in a city.
People search for happiness all their lives and I'm happy here.' He started work at Graffiti (now no longer with us) and then set up a restaurant consulting company called Back To Front. He currently has nine chops on his desk for his various business hats which include Food By Fone and Bar-B-Barn, a rotisserie chicken delivery service which he launched the day the bird-flu story broke. 'Swear to God! Swear to God! How disastrous is that?' Unbroken, he's about to open a grill restaurant in Wyndham Street, and a bakery and a separate bagel shop in Elgin Street. But everyone really associates him with the chairmanship of the Lan Kwai Fong Association, a position he's held for five years.
He's extremely serious when he talks about this job, as well he might be: he took it on in the wake of the tragedy of 31 December 1992 when 21 young people died. After the shell-shock wore off, people began to look round and see what they wanted from the street. 'It used to be a bar and disco area but it has evolved naturally into a restaurant district. There's only one disco now. We have 78 food and beverage outlets and there are real restaurant-managing concepts running them. Everything is very focused on food now. There was a rough gweilo element that we purposefully pushed to Wan Chai.' I said that I still associated Lan Kwai Fong with merry young expats braying to one another across the cobblestones at weekends and Feldman said: 'It's only Fridays and Saturdays and it's only ground floor. You're right, there are still drunken gweilos but what you're not seeing are all those restaurants packed with businessmen and women. The average age in Lan Kwai Fong is well over 30. Well, well, well over 30. When people say to me, 'My kids go to Lan Kwai Fong', I worry because their kids are not going to Lan Kwai Fong and as parents they obviously don't know where they are.' Triads? 'None, none, none. No one believes me but it's true. We asked for a high uniformed police presence all the time and more so at weekends. We were criticised for that but we wanted to send a message that said 'Have a good time but don't trash the place'. Maybe it's my Canadianism but it gives me a sense of security.' Drugs? 'I've never seen it.' MacDonald's? 'We wanted multi-level pricing, that was a key, key, key strategy. We celebrated McDonald's and Haagen-Dazs coming into the area as we celebrated Indochine and Va Bene. I personally got a lot of criticism but you need wide market appeal.' This year, the association plans to return greenery to the Fong, which was originally a flower market. There are plans for hanging baskets and trees and recycling. Feldman is doing his bit with plants and bird-feeders on the balcony outside his office. 'It's like a little country park,' he cried, as we strolled past it later (it isn't really, but you have to applaud the optimism). 'I love this business! I love the feeling that we make people feel good! It's like holding one of my own dinner parties but big time.'
