The Green Thumb: Eddy Leung

“I started out as a pot washer at Gaddi’s in the Peninsula. I was 18,” Eddy Leung begins. “Then I became a cook, then a chef, then an executive chef, then a consultant... and now I’m back to being a chef,” he chuckles.

Eddy also reveals that he was the owner and chef behind the hugely successful French restaurant, Poison Ivy, from 1993 to 2003. “SARS killed me,” he recalls. “We were doing so, so well. Full every night…but when SARS struck, Hong Kong became a ghost town. I lost so much money. Not one table was occupied for six weeks. In a month and a half, I had to close. If you can’t pay rent, you can’t survive.”

But far from giving up, Eddy went on to open the first French restaurant in Shenzhen—also called Poison Ivy—and then became an executive chef at the Ritz-Carlton in Hong Kong. “I was there until the day they closed [for relocation to the ICC],” Eddy explains. After that, he became the executive chef at East, Swire’s business hotel in Tai Koo. “Being an executive chef is every chef’s goal, but all I did was order other people to cook. I had to sit in the back office and go to endless PR meetings... I needed to cook again. Once you reach a certain career notch, there’s nothing higher to climb to. I returned to the part I liked most.”

“When I was eight, I wrote down on a piece of paper that ‘I want to be a chef,’” Eddy says. “This is my absolute passion. I can’t even pick a favorite dish!” Looking around his latest digs—a private kitchen in Aberdeen called Chef’s Studio—it is clear the space is a labor of love, from the candleholders and birdcages decorated with butterflies to the photography and calligraphy on the wall.

“People want to entertain their friends in Hong Kong, but can’t spend hours chopping and preparing everything themselves,” Eddy says. “The idea is, I do the preparation with the host [of the meal] from two to five o’clock, then from five to six o’clock we have happy hour together! At seven, more guests arrive and then they put on an apron and work with me in the kitchen so we can prepare a banquet for all their friends.”

Every ingredient is chosen with the utmost care—starting from the organic farm he maintains on the balcony outside, which stands out in stark contrast to the highway below. Eddy proudly grows his own romaine lettuce, rosemary and Italian parsley, among many other herbs. A big believer in slow-cooking, he uses a sous-vide poaching machine, controlling the temperature to reach an ideal setting for the meat or vegetable. “It’s about achieving a real, rustic taste.” White Hokkaido scallops with juicy orange caviar on a bed of white wine, al dente risotto with fragrant arugula leaves and polenta fried duck pate are examples of what can be found on the menu at Chef’s Studio.