HONG KONG'S TOP chefs waited with bated breath to hear who would represent the SAR at the finals of the first World Master of Culinary Arts, the Wedgwood Awards in Paris in May. After a lavish dinner at the Island Shangri-La, Roy Ackerman, international grand jury chairman and British restaurant guru, and Richard Shepherd, the first Englishman to win a Michelin star, addressed the gathering. The Hong Kong jury, led by 'Mr Lan Kwai Fong' Allan Zeman, included Hong Kong Tourism Board's Selina Chow and Mervyn Davies, who has just been promoted from being Standard Chartered's group executive director here to the bank's group CEO in London. It was a tall order to choose between cooks the calibre of Leung Shu-wah of the Mandarin's Man Wah restaurant and Philip Sedgwick of Gaddi's at The Peninsula. For appearances sake it was probably just as well that Yeung Koon-yat of the Forum Restaurant won, and not chefs from Zeman's China Lan Kwai Fong, Cafe des Artistes and Indochine who were among the 10 nominees.
