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TCM meets fine dining on Hong Kong restaurant’s menu, with dishes that prove traditional medicine isn’t all bitter

Edwin Tang, of The Mira Hong Kong’s Cuisine Cuisine restaurant, has created health-replenishing dishes that incorporate traditional Chinese medicine ingredients

The goal, he says, is to ‘make sure the food is nourishing and helps maintain the body’s equilibrium’; to start with, he is using milder TCM ingredients

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Chef Edwin Tang, of The Mira Hong Kong’s Cuisine Cuisine restaurant, creates health-replenishing dishes that use traditional Chinese medicine ingredients. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

Published: 12:45pm, 13 May 2024Updated: 7:40am, 29 May 2024

Cantonese cuisine is never just about flavour and texture. Health and medicinal properties are often just as significant, which is why ingredients such as bird’s nest, turtle jelly and sea cucumber remain popular – though some question their health benefits and bemoan their blandness.

Edwin Tang Ho-wang, of The Mira Hong Kong’s Cuisine Cuisine restaurant, is the latest chef to attempt to bridge this chasm and creates health-replenishing Chinese dishes that also appease the gourmet palate.

A graduate of the Vocational Training Council in Hong Kong, Tang has steadily progressed in a career that spans the Empire Hotel, the Mandarin Oriental’s Man Wah and the Hong Kong Cricket Club to working at celebrity chef Jacky Yu Kin-chi’s Xi Yan, before landing a job at The Mira’s Chinese restaurant.

Tang’s recent Spring Equinox nourishing menu is his most ambitious yet. It incorporates a variety of premium and uncommon roots, berries and herbs found in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) to restock one’s internal qi and boost immunity.

Some of the ingredients used by Tang at the restaurant. Photo: Xiaomei Chen

“Finding a balance is my priority,” explains Tang. “Flavour is not actually the most important thing here. For this menu, the goal is to make sure the food is nourishing and helps maintain the body’s equilibrium.