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Enoch Yiu

Chan Kam-sing may be a full-time executive at Hang Seng Bank but he does not need to use a computer nor count banknotes. All he needs is a big knife to carry out his duties.
Today is a big day for the bank's executive chef as he and his 12 teammates sharpen the tools of their trade and start chopping for this year's snake soup banquet season.
Hang Seng Bank's traditional snake season banquet has been served every year since 1962: the famous soup and other dishes are prepared by the bank's own corporate chefs in the Penthouse, the in-house restaurant on the top floor of its headquarters in Central.
Like other bankers, Chan's work has been affected by the financial crisis. He served more than 7,300 clients last snake season - from November until February - up 46 per cent from the previous year when the financial crisis was  at its peak.  
'We expect the number to be higher this year,' Chan said.
The highest number of guests served during a snake season was about 8,700 - or 126 on average every day - in 2000-2001. Following Sars, the number dropped to 7,500, compared with 8,200 in the previous year.
Hang Seng's restaurant is not open to the public and is there primarily for executives to take their clients out for lunch or dinner. The chefs, along with the wait staff, form part of the bank's corporate communications department and work very much like a five-star hotel restaurant except it is not expected to earn a profit.
 Other lenders such as Bank of East Asia and Bank of China (Hong Kong) also have their own chefs and kitchens. It is considered part of Chinese tradition to serve meals in a homely atmosphere for important guests and to maintain the quality of the food.
 Hang Seng also finds that having its own kitchen headed by Chan is more cost effective than outsourcing. The Penthouse can seat 280 guests for lunch or dinner. If executives had to invite guests to the same standard of restaurant outside, it would be up to four times more expensive. 
'This also allows guests to dine in a more private environment,'  Chan said. 'The chef can cook the highest quality meals by using the best ingredients. We also need to be sure the presentation looks good.'
Hang Seng has hosted the largest snake banquet in town for a long time. The snake season accounts for 60 per cent of the meals served by the bank each year. 
The first snake soup banquet was served by the bank in 1962 when Ho Tim, the general manager, hired chef Lee Choy, who was renowned for his snake soup, as executive chef. 
Over the past 48 years, the bank has held the snake soup banquet every year from November until one week before the  Lunar New Year - which  falls in January or February.
'These are the best months to have the soup as the snake meat is fat and the weather is so cold that you need it to keep the body warm,' Chan said. The snake meat  is imported from farms in Guangxi. 'We only import from a reliable supplier with the highest quality of snake meat.'  
The soup base, containing snake bones, chicken, Yunnan ham, lean pork, dried tangerine peel, ginger and longan, is cooked for several hours. Finely chopped ingredients, including five kinds of farmed snake meat, fish maw, chicken meat and black mushroom are added into the soup base and cooked for another 30 minutes. 
A final splash of Shaoxing wine completes the process. The snake soup is  served with shredded lemon leaf, chrysanthemum, lettuce and crispy preserved taro curd flakes. 
For the bank, the banquet is an  annual gathering  for important clients and contacts. 
Hang Seng Bank vice-chairman and chief executive Margaret Leung Ko May-yee  boasts that chef Chan's skills are first class. 'His expertise is behind the reputation of the Hang Seng Penthouse as a fine-dining venue that compares favourably with many of the top-name restaurants in Hong Kong,' Leung said.
'We aim to provide a first-class experience for our customers, both in customer service as well as in corporate hospitality. An invitation to a Hang Seng snake soup luncheon or dinner is coveted by many of our customers. Besides, it's often easier to strengthen relationships and discuss business issues over snake soup and red wine in our private dining rooms!'
Leung said operating a five-star hospitality venue on the bank's premises also makes good business sense. 
'It gives us the ability to arrange anything from a cosy dinner for a handful of clients to a cocktail reception or banquet for several hundred customers, as well as seminars and corporate events, without worrying about the standard of service,' she said. 
Besides Hang Seng, Chinese restaurants around the city are also busy serving snake soup banquets this time of the year.  
Tai Hei Hing Restaurant is one eatery well known for its snake soup. Manager Danny Ko said Hong Kong companies like to have snake soup banquets of hundreds of people during autumn as a way of gathering staff together.
'Besides big banquet orders for snake soup, increasing numbers of individual clients also order snake soup as part of the lunch or dinner. For them this is just like ordering the soup of the day. We have seen many orders of snake soup in the past two weeks,' Ko said.
But the soup is not the first choice of everyone. Among the diners at Hang Seng, 75 per cent order snake soup and the rest opt for another special dish - fotiaoqiang or 'Buddha Jumps Over the Wall'. 
Fotiaoqiang is so named because, as legend has it, the dish smelled and tasted so good that the Buddha jumped over the wall to have a look. It is arguably the best-known delicacy of Fujian province, famed for its hue, aroma and flavour. 
It is a stew of dried seafood, including whole Yoshihama abalone, fish maw, sea cucumber and conpoy, cooked in Shaoxing wine and a supreme soup base. 
Hang Seng introduced fotiaoqiang after Sars in 2003 when there was a ban on import of snake meat that year. 
 Traditionally fotiaoqiang has shark's fin but Hang Seng sticks to its 'green bank' policy and has not used this ingredient since 2003. 
It has also stopped using black moss or endangered reef fish species in any of its dishes and has been in full compliance with the guidelines set out in WWF Hong Kong's Seafood Guide since 2007. 
Chan has been a chef for 31 years but only joined Hang Seng  last year. Before that, he was the chef of Cuisine Cuisine. 
Tastes have changed over the years, he said. 'Thirty years ago, customers wanted stronger tastes and we used more oil and salt in cooking. 
'But now, we all demand a more healthy diet and they want the chef to use less salt and less oil.'



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