Feast meets West in Hong Kong

When Joseph Tse Kam-chung - executive chef at Above & Beyond, Hotel Icon's Chinese restaurant - first tasted the semi-dried tomatoes from the hotel's club floor buffet, he thought they were too salty. But the umami-like taste and smell soon had him hooked.

"The fragrance made such an impression on me, I couldn't get it out of my head," says Tse. That experience sparked rounds of brainstorming and finally led to a dish of wok-fried prawns with semi-dried Italian tomatoes. To prevent the dish becoming too intense, he added fresh tomatoes as well.

Having worked extensively overseas in his 39-year career, Tse stresses the importance of staying open to new ideas and learning all the time. "It's important to expose yourself to the different types of cooking and ingredients; that's how you can continuously add to your repertoire," he says. His rendition of the Cantonese classic sweet and sour pork consists of thinly sliced Iberico wrapped around batons of pineapple and cooked in a sauce of apple cider and red wine vinegars, besides the usual brown sugar, so the diner gets the entire experience of the dish all in one bite.

"We have guests from all over the world, so I started to experiment with ingredients that foreign diners would recognise, such as red wine vinegar," Tse says. Even local customers need something new: "Sweet and sour pork has been around for about 50 years, and it's time to present diners with something fresh," he says.

Tsang Chiu-king, executive chef at Langham Place's Chinese restaurant Ming Court, is also keen on innovation.

"We need to move forward to make Cantonese cuisine attractive to a younger crowd," he says. He believes that "young professionals tend to eat out more and make more frequent visits, which is good for business." While many regulars are families attracted by Ming Court's classic dishes, "the younger ones are keen to try new things, especially to pair with wine", says Tsang.