Podcast: Hong Kong burger wars and Wagyumafia’s US$100 sandwiches – Eat Drink Asia
- We talk about Shake Shack opening its second Hong Kong outlet, just down the road from Washington chain Five Guys’ first city restaurant, also soon to open
- Meanwhile, we bite into a giant wagyu beef gourmet sandwich
In the first episode of our Eat Drink Asia podcast, we covered the Hong Kong debut of famous New York burger chain Shake Shack at IFC Mall in Central, and in episode seven we look at how the burger wars are heating up again.
Shake Shack is opening its second location in the Pacific Place mall in Admiralty, and a few hundred metres to the east in Johnston Road, Five Guys from Washington opens later this month.
If burgers aren’t your thing, what about a gourmet sandwich that is one of the most expensive in the world? We are talking about Wagyumafia, which is famous for its cutlet sandwiches – a giant slab of prime wagyu beef seared and placed between two slices of toasted bread. That’ll be US$100, please.
It’s one very rich sandwich – so rich that even a quarter of one is enough to satisfy you. So who’s going to eat these decadent snacks? Don’t worry, Hong Kong has gourmands who are willing to pay any price for good food.
Someone who has seen the culinary scene in the city evolve over three decades is chef Gray Kunz. The Swiss chef was born and raised in Singapore, and in the 1980s he worked at Plume, the fine-dining French restaurant at The Regent hotel in Hong Kong, which is now The InterContinental.
In 2009 Kunz returned to Hong Kong to open his restaurant Cafe Gray Deluxe in the Upper House, with its stunning view of Victoria Harbour. He talks to us about his career, and his love of flying.
