Joyce Ma’s amateur chef grandson to cook at Sevva, serving a US$250 six-course meal with fish, a katsu twist and his take on lemon tea for dessert

Christopher Ho first learned to cook watching Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay on YouTube. Later he asked Eric Räty, head chef at Michelin-starred Arbor, for tips

Next week he will prepare a six-course dinner at Sevva in Hong Kong, where guests can pay extra to pair the dishes with cocktails by his sister, Nicola Tessa Ho

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Christopher Ho King-tung (left), Bonnae Gokson and Nicola Tessa Ho (right) at Sevva. From November 5-7, Ho will create a six-course dinner for guests.

Published: 12:16pm, 26 Oct 2020Updated: 6:47pm, 26 Oct 2020

Christopher Ho King-tung didn’t do much cooking while he was at university.

For whatever reason, his friends thought he wasn’t a great cook and Ho – the grandson of Hong Kong fashion doyenne Joyce Ma – was often asked to wash up instead.

“Later, I had a feeling they just didn’t want to do the dishes,” Ho, who now has a job in health care administration managing hospitals in China, laughs.

Next week, from November 5-7, Ho’s culinary prowess will be on full display at Sevva in Central on Hong Kong Island as he creates a six-course dinner. His sister, Nicola Tessa Ho, will pair dishes with cocktails. The dinner is HK$1,988 (US$256), plus an extra HK$500 for cocktails.

Choi, one of the dishes Ho will serve at Sevva. He first learned how to cook by watching British celebrity chefs on YouTube.

The 26-year-old is quick to explain that he’s not a professionally trained chef, and that he first learned how to cook by watching British celebrity chefs Gordon Ramsay and Jamie Oliver on YouTube. “I like to eat and wanted to see what ingredients go into cooking,” he says of his initial foray into the kitchen.

From there, he began cooking family-style dishes. Then, around two years ago, he approached Eric Räty about cooking restaurant food, and the Finnish chef de cuisine at Arbor in Hong Kong taught Ho a few of the dishes on the two-Michelin-star restaurant’s menu.