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SCMP Reporter

Eating out can turn into a nightmare for diners with dietary requirements based on health or lifestyle reasons.

 Fortunately, there are restaurants in Hong Kong that go to some length to cater to such needs by offering tailor-made dishes in addition to their standard menus, and without making their guests feel like second-class citizens.

 One such place is The Cafe at the Ritz-Carlton, which offers a comprehensive macrobiotic menu during lunchtimes.

 A macrobiotic diet uses whole foods and eliminates refined and chemically processed ones as well as meat and dairy products.

 If this conjures up dull images of a daily diet of brown rice and excessive amounts of pulses, the reality is far more imaginative.

 The Cafe's chef, Damian McManamon, dismisses the notion that macrobiotic food, which proponents claim can benefit ailments ranging from arthritis to diabetes and obesity, has to be uninspired.

 'The menus are adapted to the location where Ritz-Carlton hotels are throughout the world,' he says.

 'It's big-time popular with Hong Kong ladies,' he adds, because the menus have no oils or butter.

 But, Mr McManamon admits, 'You have to work at these foods. It can be very boring working with lentils and beans. You have to season the food to make it attractive and tasty.'  A typical menu, available for lunch and via room service, features miso vegetable soup with tofu and lotus root, followed by pan-seared sea bass fillet on lentil and mushroom ragout with a ginger broth.

 Dessert comprises fruit glazed almond crepe purses with dried berry compote followed by Japanese green tea. The three-course menu costs $288.

 Over at the Renaissance Harbour View, the Oasis restaurant attracts another kind of healthy diner: those watching their waistlines. On weekday lunchtimes, visitors can tuck into a selection of vegetable-based items and salads as well as hot dishes which avoid the use of high calorie oils.

 'It suits the ambience and decor which is like a conservatory with its glass roof and wall and garden-like feel,' says Michael Soong Yuen-po, the hotel's assistant food and beverage manager.

 A card in front of each dish lists the ingredients and details the calorie count, as well as calcium and fat contents. Mr Soong says the lunch, which costs about $150, is popular with Hong Kong's 'office ladies', but notes with some amusement that with desserts, 'I don't observe a great deal of restraint'. Lucky then that the chefs favour honey for flavourings, although Mr Soong adds, 'You can't avoid cream totally'.

 Vong, at the Mandarin Oriental, prides itself on a comprehensive vegetarian menu, rather than token dishes to appease non-carnivores.

 Spokesman Sue Kim says: 'More and more vegetarians are coming to the restaurant. We are the only Vong in the world to offer a formal vegetarian menu and that's because there's definitely a demand for it.

 'We use French cooking techniques with Southeast Asian ingredients such as Thai spices ... Visually it's pretty but not so much that you don't want to eat it.'  However, she also points out that the restaurant uses fish sauce.

 A typical appetiser is fennel and green apple with juniper berries on baby spinach ($88) followed by soft tofu doughnuts with bean sprouts and a miso sauce ($138).

 The restaurant also offers a vegetarian black plate, which is an assortment of five starters for $158.

 In the Mandarin Grill, chef de cuisine Wan Kwok-chung, who is re-introducing an organic menu at the end of February, has his work cut out trying to source the ingredients.

 Organic foods are minimally preserved to maintain their naturalness and avoid the use of artificial ingredients and preservatives. The methods used to produce the food have a low impact on the environment and do not involve toxic chemical pesticides and fertilisers.

 As a result, it is sometimes difficult in Hong Kong to source such produce on a regular basis, although certain kinds of vegetables are available.

 'We haven't got an organic market in Hong Kong so sometimes I have to get supplies from Australia or wherever,' Mr Wan says. 'It's a question of talking to suppliers and finding out from them what's available.'  His menu, which he is devising at the moment and reckons will cost around $600 for three courses with tea or coffee, will feature organic salmon from Ireland and chicken from France.

 Mr Wan says the secret to making organic food tasty lies in the way that it is cooked.

 'The green vegetables are steamed, the salmon will be poached and the chicken roasted.'  One organic product that Mr Wan has been unable to source is milk and, therefore, cream. This means that although the restaurant serves fresh organic bread, the butter is processed, as is the cream that is served with desserts.

 'It's true that organic food in the raw doesn't look that good, but the flavour is simply beautiful,' the chef says. And somehow, you just cannot help but believe him.



Cooked to dietary order