One of the world's most innovative chefs, Jean-Georges Vongerichten, drinks an espresso every morning. A creature of habit but, paradoxically, someone who loves to experiment, Mr Vongerichten chose to dine at one of the most traditional Cantonese restaurants in town - the 25-year-old Fook Lam Moon. A successful chef and author (Simple Cuisine has sold 120,000 copies) if a rather reluctant restaurateur ('I'm most comfortable in the kitchen, less comfortable as a restaurateur,' he says), Mr Vongerichten opened his first restaurant, Jo Jo, in New York in 1991. This was followed the next year by Vong in New York, followed by a branch in London in 1994. Last April he opened Jean-Georges, his third New York restaurant, and on September 1 his third Vong establishment, in Hong Kong, on the site of the old Pierrot at the Mandarin Oriental. For Mr Vongerichten, food is all about the relationship between change and tradition. He believes a chef's role is to bring new flavours to the table: after all 'there are no new fishes coming out of the ocean'. 'The days of chefs cooking for themselves are over. They must cook for their public,' he says, adding that people living in large cities are constantly on the lookout for new dining experiences. In a beautiful example of the wheel turning full circle, Mr Vongerichten relates that he worked 15 years ago at Pierrot, in the very kitchen of the Mandarin Oriental that now houses the Vong crew; this job was followed by a stint at The Oriental Bangkok. Looking back on those four years, he says, 'Asia opened my eyes'. Today, serving up a much simpler cuisine than that of 10 years ago, he builds on his Michelin three-star training in France with an understanding of Asian flavours and textures. One result is something as perfectly conceived as foie gras with ginger sauce and mango. At the same time, Mr Vongerichten is extremely happy that his mother, in northern France, still cooks the traditional food of Alsace he was raised on. He is similarly happy that the chefs in Fook Lam Moon still cook the Cantonese dishes he remembers from the old days. Dining in someone else's restaurant is not a problem for Mr Vongerichten because he is perpetually interested in what everyone else cooks. We were out for dinner but he did not want to dissect every dish academically. He did not spend hours poring over the menu: indeed, he got rather impatient with the length of it. With a whole page given over to shark's fin and another to abalone, we were soon asking the waiter to recommend the best dishes in those categories. This is the way to get the best dishes in a restaurant, provided you are lucky to get a waiter as good as ours. When diners do this, though, they often run the risk of getting not the best but the most expensive dishes. Surprisingly, our waiter did not steer us towards the most expensive version of shark's fin, but we ordered it anyway. Mr Vongerichten was rapt as he watched the waiter remove the whole chicken from the tureen and skilfully divide the vegetables and superior shark's fin into bowls, finally ladling on the soup. 'I love the way the chicken falls apart,' he said. Naturally he took an informed interest in the dishes. In what seemed to be fresh, delicious and perfectly cooked water spinach, Mr Vongerichten immediately picked up on the ingredient most people know about from the headache afterwards: monosodium glutamate. And he was fascinated with a dish described as chicken in milk: it was clearly marinated rather than cooked in cream and tasted a dream dipped into thick chilli sauce. The freshness of the shrimp-stuffed bean curd elicited another excited pronouncement, and minced pigeon in lettuce leaves instigated a discussion on the role of texture in good food. When a person names not one but three restaurants after himself, and brings six of his New York team to help out on his first foray in Asia, you do not expect him to be self-effacing. Nor do you expect him to laugh off what is clearly his world-class technique, claiming that product quality accounts for 70 per cent of a good dish. Mr Vongerichten had woken up at five o'clock that morning to go to the market in search of precisely that quality product, so we were ready to leave the restaurant before many of the relaxed, extended family groups around us. The traditional desserts had sounded a little too traditional for the New Yorkers around the table, so we paid a bill that came to nearly $1,000 a person, including the odd bottle of wine and beer. Meanwhile, Mr Vongerichten was worrying about the opening of Vong: however many restaurants he has opened, he takes nothing for granted. So, after New York, London and now Hong Kong, what is his next project? 'My dream, literally, is to open a small hotel in Hanoi with 10 rooms and cook for my friends.' Lucky friends. Fook Lam Moon, G/F Newman House, 34-35 Johnston Road, Wan Chai. Tel: 2866-0663. Hours: noon-3, 6-11pm