Chef Talk: Jean-Georges Vongerichten

At age 29, French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten became the youngest chef ever to receive a four-star review in The New York Times. Together with chef icons such as Daniel Boulud and David Bouley, he led a culinary evolution of French food in New York in the 1980s. For the past several decades, he’s steadily built a global empire that now consists of more than 30 restaurants around the world, including the three-Michelin-starred Jean-Georges in New York. Now the chef is coming to Hong Kong to open Mercato, the second outpost of his American-Italian concept. He tells Leslie Yeh about his dream restaurant, his obsession with Peking duck, and his biggest failure.

You’ve operated Mercato for four years now in Shanghai. What made you decide to bring this concept to Hong Kong? I lived in Hong Kong before when I opened Vong at the Mandarin Oriental [where Pierre is now]. In 2012 we opened Mercato in Shanghai, and people really loved it. I’ve always wanted to come back to Hong Kong but just never had the right opportunity until Allan Zeman [of California Tower] approached me. 

How do you think the city’s dining scene has evolved since you last worked as a chef here? Things haven’t changed much as far as I can tell—back then there were still foodies everywhere. Hong Kong is an exciting city to work in—there is so much more produce available to us here than what we have in Shanghai, and compared to the first time I worked in Hong Kong. I remember when I first moved here you couldn’t find basics such as rosemary, pasta, thyme—I had to haul my own bag of ingredients from New York and grow my own herbs in the garden.

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