Ask any foodie in Hong Kong for a restaurant address and they'll direct you to openrice.com for its search engine and reviews.
K.C. Koo stumbled on the site almost 10 years ago and began posting reviews. He's since topped OpenRice's charts for reviewing the most restaurants, started his own blog, gourmetkc.blogspot.com, written for Hong Kong magazines and penned two books.
He is now seen as a spokesman for online food writing, speaking at events such as last week's Social Media Week Hong Kong. The derivatives trader-turned-civil servant-turned-food writer and father writes at least one food review online every day, and has put his name to more than 8,400.
Why did you start writing food reviews online?
Around 10 years ago, there was only openrice.com [on the Hong Kong internet food scene]. I'd just come back from a year in Japan, where I learned about Japanese cuisine. Clients would take me out for Japanese food and order salmon sashimi, but in all the time I'd lived in Japan, I'd never had salmon sashimi. Ask 10 Hongkongers and they will tell you they like Japanese food, especially sashimi, and specifically salmon sashimi. That was what was being reflected on openrice.com. So I thought I should share what I knew about food.
How has the internet influenced the food industry in Hong Kong?