Hong Kong restaurants turning toward sustainable, organic fare

is now so ubiquitous in the language of dining that it sounds almost like a cliché. As with most catchphrases, the term has been abused by unscrupulous marketers - after all, you could argue that all of our food started off on a farm of some description. But there are some genuinely enthusiastic chefs and restaurateurs who are turning concrete terraces into herb gardens and swapping board meetings for farm tours.

The term conjures images of open fields and rustic barns, and should denote production processes that are sustainable, responsible and traceable. The early proponents of the green eating trend did tend to err on the hippy dippy side of things, but these days, ensuring the integrity of a restaurant's products and sources is no longer the prerogative of left-leaning social activists; it's becoming a given for everyone who loves food.

One of the earliest practitioners of the farm-to-table philosophy in Hong Kong was Margaret Xu, who started her private kitchen, Yin Yang, five years ago. Back then, it was just her, on a farm in Yuen Long, serving one table each night. These days, she can feed about 30 guests in her three-storey heritage building on Ship Street, in Wan Chai, but she remains steadfast in her approach. "I wanted to take local ingredients and add creativity that is inspired by the rest of the world. I found a certified organic farm in Hong Kong, and they supply the bulk of my ingredients," she says.

Nurdin Topham, head chef at the newly opened NUR, has spent several months since arriving from London learning about the region's flora and fauna and reaching out to local organic farms. "We want to explore the regions, the edible geography, if you like, and be inspired by what we find," he says. The restaurant even has a dedicated sourcing manager to coordinate with farms. Topham says, "We're just starting on the process. We're now coming out of winter, and the challenge is summer when the temperatures rise and local farmers grow very little, so we've tried to select seed cultivars and take inspiration from other cultures, like Thailand, Malaysia, that have a more fertile growing season despite the warm weather. For me, it's all about the cultivar. That determines the resilience, how well it does in its terroir, it determines its taste, its nutrition, so that's the focus."

Although there are now about 100 local organic farms in Hong Kong, their small sizes, unstable supply and limited variety of plants make it challenging for chefs like Topham, who is from Britain and has a background in fine dining. "It's our intention to gain as much produce as possible from our local region, but I'd be lying if I said that everything was from this region. I would love to serve a menu that was completely local," he says. Topham worked for more than a decade with Raymond Blanc. The master chef of the Michelin two-star Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons is known for his commitment to conscious eating. Blanc was awarded an OBE for culinary excellence and is president of the Sustainable Restaurant Association.

"As a chef, you have a tremendous responsibility to influence an industry and every purchase you make is a political decision," Topham says. "You make a decision to support a form of agriculture that cares about the environment, or one that doesn't. I see it as black and white as that. Blanc would instil in all of us the importance of cultivar, the environment in which the product was brought up, its terroir."