3 young chefs helping to define Shenzhen’s new fine dining wave
The city is known for cheap weekend eats, but a new contingent of young chefs is now burnishing its reputation for fine dining too
Shenzhen is a young city, still less than 50 years old despite its rapid growth in size and scale. If the city is young, its fine dining scene is still in nappies by comparison – there wasn’t much money for tasting menus back in the early days. But now, the city is increasingly gaining renown as an exciting dining destination – not just for cheap family meals at the weekend, but also at the high end of the market.
We speak to three young chefs making their mark on Shenzhen’s fine dining scene. Their distinct culinary perspectives and philosophies on redefining gastronomy are expanding the city’s conception of what good eating can mean.
Reina Chen, Fumée
Fumée’s Reina Chen is quickly establishing herself as a pioneering force in Shenzhen’s fine dining scene. Cooking was not her first career. “I grew up watching the Food Network – Rachael Ray, Bobby Flay, then Iron Chef. I would try to recreate their dishes at home.” But instead of heading into restaurant kitchens, she was drawn to another art form: Kunqu opera.
Chen, now 39, sees parallels between the two disciplines. “Both require basic knowledge of background and context. Kunqu demands more training to appreciate, but food is universal. To prepare food as beauty, I can also coordinate dishes with aesthetically pleasing crockery and colour combinations.”
When Chen, a Shanghai native, first arrived in Shenzhen, she noticed the city’s breakneck rhythm. “Despite its rapid development over the past two decades, Shenzhen remains youthful, with a cutthroat pace even faster than Shanghai’s. The food scene moves quickly too, with fierce competition to satisfy guests’ hunger for novelty.”
Fumée embraces a “glocal” concept – global yet local. Chen sees possibilities for expanding Chinese cuisine not through new flavours but through form and presentation. “Imagination can take our cuisine far and wide, embracing tradition while creating new ways for conventional flavour combinations that can be shared around the world.”