Jason Black
He may be Executive Chef at Shore restaurant, but it doesn’t end there. Jason Black is a whirlwind of cooking, charity work—and the occasional bit of PR on the side. As he launches his newest project, the Sarment Icons 2014 Cookbook Calendar, he tells Andrea Lo about moving to Hong Kong twice, why the customer’s not always right, and why he could be happy flying planes for a living.
I was born in the Northeast of England. I moved to South Africa and grew up there.
I went into the Air Force as part of conscription back in those days. I had two career choices: I really wanted to fly airplanes, but I never made it into the Air Force’s selection. My second choice was to cook.
I had the opportunity to take a year off, and I went to Australia. I traveled around, cooking here and there.
I came to Hong Kong for the first time in 1991. I started working in TST, then got a job working in Lan Kwai Fong. I worked there until the tragedy in 1992. I was back in South Africa running restaurants for another 10 years before coming back here in 2005.
It was a strange coincidence that brought me back here. I have an aircraft that I used to fly every morning. One day I went up to the airfield and there was a chap there on holiday. He said, “I want to open up a restaurant in Hong Kong. Would you consider moving back?”
A month later, I was back in Hong Kong.