Family is the essential ingredient for Kam

There are certainly some advantages to being the boss' eldest son. For Kam Kinsen, who holds that title in the Yung Kee Restaurant founder's family, it meant his favourite quick lunch from his teens - noodles with roast goose oil - has been memorialised on the menu as 'prince noodle'.

But with that inheritance came a big bowl filled with responsibilities, not the least of which is how to keep the celebrated 64-year-old establishment fresh while retaining its traditional flavour.

The restaurant is very much a family business. Founded in 1942 by Kam Shiu Fai, otherwise known as 'Roast Goose Fai', it and its secret roasting recipes are now managed by Kam Kinsen with the support of two brothers and a sprinkling of the third generation.

Once a seven-table establishment in Sheung Wan, the restaurant now takes up six floors - including two for members - of the self-owned, 11-storey building in Wellington Street, and serves about 3,000 customers a day dim sum, lunch and dinner, as well as boxes and boxes of roast goose takeaway.

While the family doesn't open its books, a back-of-the-envelope tally of its sales of roast goose alone spins a daily gross income total of about HK$108,000 for some 300 birds, and during the Mid-Autumn Festival or Lunar New Year period, HK$144,000 a day for the 400 sold daily.

The year 1964 proved a key year for the establishment and its current director. It was then that Kam Shiu Fai, frustrated about having to move every time a landlord raised the rent or redeveloped, spent HK$1 million on the Wellington Street building. That was a bold move for a man who, as the youngest of seven children, grew up poor, and was forced at the age of 16 to work as a chef's apprentice for HK$18 a month.

That year also marked Kam Kinsen's entry at Yung Kee. He was later joined by his two brothers. While called 'princes' by other staff and customers, they certainly didn't act regally - helping their father to do everything from roasting the goose to buying vegetables, taking orders and tallying accounts.