‘Demon Chef’ broadens his horizons with TV series

He promises an “X-tremely” exciting experience, combined with the “exotic”. “What I want to do is give you something unique – something that you’ve never had,” says celebrity chef Alvin Leung of his culinary creation, X-treme Chinese, a modern interpretation of familiar Chinese tastes and ingredients.

And anyone who has eaten at his three- Michelin-star fine-dining restaurant, Bo Innovation in Hong Kong, will be familiar with his signature molecular xiao long bao with its spherical membrane filled with Shanghainese soup tasting of dumplings or the lap mei fan baked Alaska.

As Leung explains, in order to appreciate his cuisine fully, one has to have a reference of the basic ingredients. “X-treme Chinese has to have the DNA of something that’s familiar to people,” he says. So locals can understand his Hong Kong restaurants, Bo Innovation and the more casual bistro brand, MIC Kitchen.

However, he admits Westerners may not have the same point of reference.

“The only way to make lap mei fan [Chinese sausage] more comfortable for the Western palate was to add something to it that Westerners would be comfortable with, so I made it into an ice cream,” Leung says.