The region comprising Hong Kong, Macau and nine cities in Guangdong province is better known for Beijing’s ambitious plan to create a hi-tech economic powerhouse to rival California’s Silicon Valley, but the region’s cuisine has not escaped attention.

The governments of Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macau have jointly published the Greater Bay Area Standard for food items, to foster “interconnectivity and integrated development”.

It provides exact recipes and detailed instructions for the preparation, cooking and plating of several traditional food items popular in the region.

The list includes standards for 12 Cantonese dishes, six types of Cantonese dim sum and 14 items from Chiu Chow cuisine. The 183 standards also cover subjects such as food safety and hygiene.

Several food industry groups in the bay area, including veteran chefs, were consulted in drawing up the standards.

Restaurants have been encouraged to adopt them for the “harmonisation of rules”, but the guidelines have sparked concern in Hong Kong that such rules would stifle the freedom and creativity of chefs.

Although officials and some of those behind the guidelines insisted they were meant as a reference and to ensure standards for classic dishes, others in the industry felt that chefs did not need to be told what to do and should be left to experiment and innovate.

Last month marked five years since Beijing unveiled its bay area development plan.

The cuisine standards only came to the attention of the public last April when Hong Kong, Macau and Guangdong authorities signed a memorandum of understanding.

Some Hong Kong catering representatives said many in the industry were still not aware of their existence, even though all the details are online, in the database of the Greater Bay Area Standard Information Public Service Platform.

Few knew, for example, that there are nine pages of specific instructions on how to prepare scalded or boiled prawns, an item on most Cantonese seafood menus.

To get the dish right, 500 grams of “fresh and active” prawns – 12 to 50 depending on type and size – must be cooked in boiling water for two to four minutes.

The plump, pink-cooked prawns must be arranged neatly on a plate for presentation, accompanied by a shredded chilli soy dipping sauce.

According to the document, this dish demands not only the freshest ingredients, but also tests the skills of the chef.

Hong Kong’s Eating Establishment Employees General Union was among 21 organisations invited by mainland authorities to draft the standard for char siu bao, the steamed buns filled with barbecued pork found on every dim sum menu.

The guidelines state that the roasted pork belly must be cut into 3mm pieces as thin as “fingernail slices”. The finished buns must be white, soft and not stick to the teeth. The filling should be in the centre, with a strong sweet and salty flavour.

The union’s honorary chairman, Kwok Wang-hing, told the Post the guidelines were meant to be a reference point for traditional food items, rather than a set of rules the whole industry had to follow.

“When you make a barbecued pork bun, it has to look like a barbecued pork bun in the end,” said Kwok, a dim sum chef for more than four decades.

He added that there was no stopping chefs from using their own recipes and techniques to make char siu bao.

The union was involved in offering advice on 13 other dishes.

The president of the Association for Hong Kong Catering Services Management, Yeung Wai-sing, was concerned that such detailed instructions could hurt freedom and creativity.

He felt they should be focused on more easily benchmarked areas such as food safety, not the preparation of specific recipes.

Citing Cantonese sweet and sour pork ribs as an example, he said: “One chef might use frozen meat, another could use fresh meat. One could use rice vinegar, the other, artificial vinegar. The result would be really different.”

He thought the standards were “useless” for Hong Kong restaurants as they were relatively unknown, not mandatory and chefs had their own ways of preparing food.

The Hong Kong Food Council, whose members include several food trade associations, helped to draft several of the standards related to foodstuffs and food safety.

Chairman Thomas Ng Wing-yan said the cuisine standards could serve as a reference and were no different than cookbooks and travel magazines.

“A lot of people go to the library or bookstores to look at travel magazines and cookbooks,” said the veteran fruit and vegetable supplier. “If the standards are useless, then travel books would not be published, cookbooks would not be published either.”

The regional guidelines are managed by the Greater Bay Area Standardisation Research Centre set up by the Guangdong government and China’s Standardisation Administration.

The centre’s spokesman told the Post the standard guidelines would benefit the industry by ensuring quality ingredients, boosting efficiency and lowering costs. They were also “widely recognised” within the bay area as ways to preserve classic items in regional cuisines.

Before coming up with the standards, the centre carried out in-depth research to ensure a balance between standardisation and allowing for chefs’ creativity, he said.

The standards did not constrain chefs or stop them from adding their own special touches of creativity to their offerings, the spokesman added.

Instead, he said, the standards ensured consistency and quality, and encouraged the preservation and development of Cantonese cuisine.

Hong Kong’s Trade and Industry Department is responsible for coordinating government efforts related to the bay area standards.

Its spokeswoman stressed that the guidelines would not reduce or limit creativity, but would encourage improvement in the quality of products and services.

Lawmaker Ben Chan Han-pan said he thought authorities should explain the rationale for including recipes in the list of standards.

He said he had expected the system to provide mutually recognised standards to allow for the movement of goods and services in the bay area, and the cuisine benchmarks appeared to deviate from that goal.

He added that governments in the region should do more to engage the public to help them understand what the standards system was actually for.