Diner’s Diary | ‘Hong Kong is safest place in the world,’ says chef who left Bangkok fearing for his safety amid coronavirus

Chef Roland Schuller can’t think of a better place to be than Hong Kong amid the coronavirus pandemic, and looks forward to cooking some old favourites

He’s shed 10kg on a vegetable-heavy diet, but has no plans to serve that kind of food to customers at Octavium in Central, saying ‘They don’t want to eat that!’

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Roland Schuller is back in Hong Kong after a three-year stint in Thailand. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Published: 12:15pm, 16 Jun 2020Updated: 2:56pm, 16 Jun 2020

Chef Roland Schuller cannot think of anywhere he would rather than be than Hong Kong when there’s a global health crisis.

Four years ago, when we last met at the Kee Club in Hong Kong, where he was head chef, he told us he had plans to go to Peru. The Zika virus outbreak in South America put paid to that. Instead the Austrian lay low in Hong Kong for several months, before taking a job in Bangkok three years ago.

And now he’s back in Hong Kong because of the coronavirus outbreak – at Umberto Bombana’s Octavium in Central, where he is group executive chef.

“I was spending money fast. I worked in an Italian restaurant similar to Octavium, and then the coronavirus hit,” he says, explaining his return to Hong Kong. “With the virus in Bangkok, it was not safe. Hong Kong is the safest place in the world – and I miss my friends.”

Roland Schuller is back in Hong Kong and can be found at Octavium in Central. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

The 56-year-old quips: “I’m thinking about my retirement. Everything is expensive now. I need to make some money.”

He has lost 10kg since we last saw him. He attributes this to eating lots of vegetables, such as a salad of fennel, avocado, kale, broccolini, nuts and canned sardines. Once in a while he eats beef, and some chicken. And he’s been walking on the treadmill too, and doing qi gong breathing exercises at 4am.