Niko Romito, chef with 3 Michelin stars, keeps it simple in the kitchen

"The food and restaurants are of a very high quality - it's definitely a foodie city. What is impressive about Hong Kong is that we can get practically everything we desire from any part of the world. For example, I was missing an ingredient from Italy and I ordered it on the phone and, two days later, it arrived."

"I was a stockbroker in Rome but, when I was 25 years old, my father became ill. He passed away in 1999. He ran a small restaurant called Reale, in Rivisondoli, a village in Abruzzo. Up until that point I had only gone to the restaurant to eat; I didn't know anything about cooking. My sister and I originally planned to fix up the restaurant and then sell it. But after three or four months I started to enjoy it. My father didn't want me to stay in a small town of 700 people; he wanted me to be in a big city with a different lifestyle.

"When I started I didn't know how to cook, but I felt lucky at the time because I could do everything on my own without following someone else. I started to learn more about the ingredients and figured out how to bring out their natural flavours."

"Until 2000, I didn't even know about the Michelin stars so it was very emotional for me to get that first one. That's when things started to change. Two years later, we got the second one. In 2011, we moved Reale to Casadonna, a 500-year-old monastery, which also has a nine-room hotel and a culinary school. Two years later, I got my third Michelin star. I felt on top of the world.