The two years Aven Lau spent in Singapore’s compulsory National Service were vital to his development as a chef. It wasn’t the army discipline that shaped him, however, but the plentiful free time he had, when he would voraciously consume cookbooks and watch YouTube clips by the bad boys of Britain’s dining scene – Gordon Ramsay , Marco Pierre White and Tom Aikens – who made French cuisine sexy to an international audience. “I find that generation of chefs inspiring,” says Lau, chef de cuisine at Batard in Sai Ying Pun, Hong Kong, a restaurant known as much for offering fine wines at retail prices as for its food. The 27-year-old is one of several chefs of Chinese descent who, despite not receiving formal training in France, oversee some of the hottest French restaurants in Hong Kong, each with their own character. Lau studied marketing before dropping out to focus on hospitality. His first big break came in 2014, when he was to introduced to Julien Royer , who was opening Odette in Singapore (which was ranked number one on the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2020, and came second on this year’s list ). “I’m very happy he was willing to give me chance, I was a nobody at the time,” says Lau, adding that French kitchens are excellent places to learn the fundamentals of cooking, from cold larder to meat, pastry and the all-important sauce. How national service, Gordon Ramsay helped a chef find his calling Another break came in 2018 when he chanced on the Instagram feed of Daniel Calvert, then head chef at Belon , in the SoHo nightlife hotspot in Central, and messaged him seeking a job. There was a vacancy, so Lau packed his bags for Hong Kong, and has risen swiftly since. “Daniel is one of the most inspirational chefs I’ve worked for, and he opened my eyes to the type of food I wanted to cook,” Lau says of his mentor. The food at Batard, which opened in July 2020, has become more elevated and wine-friendly since Lau took over. Roasted quail with morels and a glossy vin jaune sauce displays Lau’s mastery of technique, while a terrific roast chicken is a play on Hainan chicken rice. In Wan Chai, another 27-year-old, Tiffany Lo, opened bistro Jean May around the same time as Batard, and it has been booked solid since. Lo, a former investment banker, became a chef after recovering from surgery to remove a tumour in her brain, and enrolled in Le Cordon Bleu cooking school in London. “I don’t know why I was so sure, but this is what I want to do for the rest of my life,” says Lo. One day, while lunching at Pierre Koffmann’s restaurant La Tante Claire, at The Berkeley hotel in London, she had an epiphany. “Koffmann’s pig’s trotter blew my mind,” says Lo. “I’ve read about it for so long, but it’s not until I ate it that I understood why everyone talks about it, and it made me more determined to become a chef.” Inspired, she took an unpaid position with Koffmann, which led to a full-time role, and she continues to credit him as “the greatest influence on me”. While Lo speaks reverentially of Koffmann, she admits that being a Chinese woman in some other kitchens was difficult. “There is definitely lots of discrimination and sexism,” she says, recounting racial slurs such as, “Don’t bring a dog near her, it will end up in the pot.” Lo quit one restaurant because of offensive behaviour, then, following stints at some of London’s top French restaurants, including Le Gavroche and The Square, she landed a job at La Petite Maison. Now rebranded as LPM, it paved the way for her return to Hong Kong, and eventually, her own restaurant. Rather than reinvent French cuisine, Lo tries to stay faithful to it. “My philosophy is minimal, the food is rustic and simple, based on good ingredients, made with care and love.” A dish of pan-fried sea bream has just two components, a lentil sauce and the fish, while duck breast is so tender, diners have asked if it has been prepared sous vide (it hasn’t).” Simplicity is a hallmark at Neighborhood , hidden in an alley off Hollywood Road in Central. The name, spartan interior and casual vibe belie its regular appearance on the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list (number 17 this year), with chef-owner David Lai an outlier among his more ambitious peers on the list. Lai, born in Hong Kong but raised in Los Angeles, studied fine arts at the University of California, Berkeley, but realised he was more interested in cooking, influenced in part by San Francisco’s thriving food scene in the 1990s, when restaurants such as Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse were at the vanguard of farm-to-table dining. It was also a time when French cuisine was popular, and “it was easier than working in a Chinese kitchen”, says Lai. His first big job was at celebrity haunt Masa’s, and then The Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, an Alain Ducasse restaurant under head chef Sylvain Portay. “Sylvain was my mentor,” Lai says. “He really taught me how to cook with intuition.” Sometimes, when you want to discover more about one culture, it’s interesting to see it from another perspective. Great cooking doesn’t need to have boundaries Vicky Lau, chef-owner of Tate Dining Room Lai moved back to Hong Kong in 2003 as part of the launch team for Spoon, another Ducasse outlet, this one at the InterContinental in Tsim Sha Tsui. After a listless few years, he opened his own restaurant, On Lot 10, in 2009. “By then I had got it out of my system to prove that I had to be creative, and I could relax and cook what I want to cook,” says Lai. It was the template for Neighborhood, which debuted in 2014, and while its hearty, produce-driven Mediterranean menu changes regularly, it’s worth pre-ordering the salt-baked chicken drenched in a creamy morel mushroom sauce, an exemplary medley of Chinese and French techniques and flavours. Bouillabaisse is a favourite, and Lai uses local seafood for this traditional fisherman’s stew. His version “respects the original French spirit of the dish, while getting the best out of Asian produce”. The chef who has probably most successfully married her Hong Kong heritage and classic training is Vicky Lau, the first female in Asia to win two Michelin stars for her restaurant, Tate Dining Room . Lau has created a unique French-meets-Chinese narrative described as “edible stories”, told through beautifully executed odes to a single theme or ingredient – these have included eggs, rice, tofu and tea. The current ode, to soy sauce, presented challenges for dessert, until she toured a factory in Yuen Long and discovered that dark soy is made with caramel. “From that I came up with dessert with caramel sauce, which I paired with puff pastry, mascarpone cream, caramelised apple and chocolate ice cream.” Vicky Lau became a chef almost by accident. After studying graphic design and working in advertising in New York, she moved back to Hong Kong in 2007, with plans to start her own agency. Following one of her many conversations with a good friend about food, however, they jointly enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in Bangkok. “It wasn’t that I wanted to cook French food, it was because I wanted to make cake,” says Lau. Upon completing her grand diploma, Vicky Lau worked briefly at Michelin-starred Cepage (now closed), before opening Tate in 2012. Initially a French restaurant, it has evolved to be more focused, innovative and expressive, with “the ultimate goal to define what modern Chinese means to us”. In doing so, Vicky Lau shows that it’s possible to excel in a non-native cuisine, while carving out a repertoire that honours different cultures. “Sometimes, when you want to discover more about one culture, it’s interesting to see it from another perspective,” she says. After all, “great cooking doesn’t need to have boundaries.” Batard Viking Court, 165-166 Connaught Road West, Sai Ying Pun, tel: 2318 1802 Jean May 14 Gresson Street, Wan Chai, tel: 3590 6033 Neighborhood 61-63 Hollywood Road, Central, tel: 2617 0891 Tate Dining Room 210 Hollywood Road, Sheung Wan, tel: 2555 2172