The unsustainable truth about Hong Kong’s farm-to-table aspirations

Restaurateurs who want to cook using locally sourced produce have to deal with a lack of consistency in supply quality and quantity, and diners who don’t care where their food comes from

Reading Time:5 minutes

Nicholas Chew of Serge et le Phoque at his local wet market. Photo: Paul Yeung

Published: 5:30am, 1 Sep 2016Updated: 5:39pm, 1 Sep 2016

An award-winning chef is jostling with old ladies to get his hands on the best corn at a local vegetable stall in Wan Chai’s wet market.

Selecting the finest ingredients is a very serious business for Nicholas Chew Lee-on, resident chef at Serge et le Phoque. The restaurant was awarded its first Michelin star last year for its tantalising Parisian-style dishes of informal haute cuisine at sensible prices. Chew and his French boss, restaurateur Frederic Peneau (former co-owner of the famed Le Chateaubriand in Paris, once voted France’s best restaurant) know all about the concept of terroir, and how best to source the finest quality local ingredients, so Chew’s casual admission is a little startling.

“Actually, about 85 per cent of our produce comes from overseas,” he admits as he carefully selects some beetroot from a neatly stacked pile.

It is a typical story for a leading Hong Kong restaurant because, while the issue of localism continues to dominate political discourse in the city, there is very little evidence of it making much of an impact on the city’s dining scene.

Hong Kong seems isolated from a growing international vogue for “farm to table” dining, reduced food miles and support for local ecosystems. Here, the food on the table is far more likely to have arrived from the airport than a local farm, yet despite repeated food safety scares – from Ikea horse meatballs to tainted Chinese pork – few seem unduly bothered. Well-heeled discerning diners seem to attach more value to Japanese mackerel, Tuscan sea bass and Australian grass-fed beef than anything caught or supplied fresh from around the corner.