How Hong Kong soy sauce and vinegar maker Pat Chun has kept up with the times
Company’s naturally fermented sauces are made the way they always were, but founder’s grandson is always testing new products and tweaks to traditional foods for today’s health conscious consumers
Hongkongers of a certain vintage will almost certainly remember the jingle from the Pat Chun television commercial advertising its sweetened vinegar. Even if you don’t, you’ve probably tasted the vinegar in a dish where it’s been slow-cooked with pork knuckles and ginger, which is often given to friends to announce the arrival of a newborn.
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This iconic Hong Kong brand was founded in 1932 by Ng Wai-sum, who started out making sauces in the back of his grocery store in Mong Kok. As the business grew, a separate factory had to be built, first in Kwai Chung, then Sai Kung, and now Tseung Kwan O Industrial Estate. The company is now in the hands of the third generation, Trevor Ng Shen-kuan.
Unlike most well-known Hong Kong food brands, Pat Chun didn’t move its operations to China. It has a factory in Dongguan, in Guangdong province, but, Ng says, it’s largely used only for logistics – storing raw materials and so on.
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“There’s a lot of know-how in making our products, and we need to be able to monitor the process,” he says. “You can’t just randomly hire people and expect them to know how the product is supposed to taste.”
Some of Pat Chun’s current “sifus” have been working for the company for more than 20 years, and their experience is essential, especially for naturally fermented sauces such as soy sauce and vinegar that need to be subjected to the elements, and don’t have set recipes or formulaic processes.
On the roof of Pat Chun’s custom-built factory, large, covered ceramic urns are lined up neatly. A gust of wind from the bay, which is visible from the roof, fills with the intense, distinctive scent of soy sauce. “A batch of naturally fermented soy sauce takes a year to make,” says Ng.