Hong Kong assistant to visiting chefs gets to present own menu in Test Kitchen pop-up

Test Kitchen in Western district is known for bringing up-and-coming chefs from around the world to Hong Kong to showcase their dishes to adventurous diners. Helping the visiting chefs prepare for four-day pop-up dining events including sourcing ingredients and cooking dishes is Test Kitchen head chef Devon Hou Wai-yin.

This month, Hou will finally get a chance to show off her culinary style when she takes over Test Kitchen to present her own menu.  

Her pedigree is impressive. Hou, 32, who began honing her palate at home thanks to the excellent cooking skills of her mother and maternal grandmother, has worked in Hong Kong at the two-Michelin-star Amber restaurant and one-Michelin-star Tate Dining Room and Bar.

“My mom knew I’m a picky eater and always tried to cook different dishes for me using different ingredients, so I liked to eat,” Hou says.

By the time she was in secondary school, Hou was cooking homestyle dishes like braised aubergine with minced pork and scrambled eggs with tomato. She really got into cooking on a home economics course, where the instructor taught Hou that cooking can be fun.

She wanted to enrol in a culinary course at Hong Kong’s Vocational Training College, but her mother didn’t want her to be in the kitchen and suggested Hou study hospitality, which she did for a year at Caritas Bianchi College.

She completed internships at the JW Marriott hotel and Royal Plaza Hotel. First she was assigned to wait on tables, but two weeks into her stint at the Marriott she asked to switch to the kitchen, where she excelled; when she moved to the Royal Plaza, she worked in the pastry department.

In 2006 and newly graduated, she was turned down for several jobs in Tsim Sha Tsui before being hired as a commis chef at one of the city’s top restaurants, Amber in the Landmark Mandarin Oriental hotel in Central. Working under culinary director Richard Ekkebus, she quickly learned the ropes in the cold kitchen.

“I would get into work just before 6am just so that I could get everything done in time before the chef walked in at 9am. I had to prepare breakfast, prepare things for Amber, then at the same time complete in-room dining orders, then the oven buzzer would ring, then the phone would ring, more order tickets would be printing … it was non-stop. After that I had to focus on lunch.” After two months she wanted to quit, but her colleagues persuaded her to stay, and she spent over three years there.

She followed that with stints at Cafe Gray Deluxe in Admiralty, L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon under chef Michel Del Burgo and the Mandarin Grill + Bar at the Mandarin Oriental Hong Kong hotel, before joining Tate Dining Room and Bar in 2012. At the time it was a small, newly opened restaurant in Elgin Street, SoHo.

Hou started as a chef de partie and after three months was promoted to junior sous chef. Three months after that the restaurant was awarded a Michelin star and she was promoted to sous chef.

“Together [chef-owner Vicky Lau and I] would think of dishes to create. Before I only executed the dishes the chefs had developed and I was not part of the experimental or creative process. I also learned how to manage people,” she says.

With her 30th birthday looming she embarked on a working holiday in London, where she had stints at the Goring Hotel, frequented by members of the British royal family, and a Spanish restaurant. She would have continued making tapas and paella but her work visa application was turned down, and she returned to Hong Kong in 2017.

Soon after she landed a part-time job at Test Kitchen.

The eight-course spring-themed menu she will present from April 24 to 27 features dishes, including uni with basil tomato consommé and compressed kohlrabi, cauliflower and black garlic; chargrilled Spanish octopus with beetroot, smoked paprika and porcini crumble; and Okinawa pork belly with carrot tahini purée. Dessert will be shiso ice cream with peach cream.

Hou hopes this will be the first in a series of menus she presents, which will allow her to experiment and gauge interest in her creations. “I do want to open my own restaurant eventually, but now I need to learn more because this venture is a big risk, so I need more preparation.”

For more information see www.testkitchen.com.hk/devonhou

Test Kitchen, Shop 3, 158A Connaught Road West, Sai Ying Pun, tel: 9032 7628.

April 24 to 27, HK$980 per person with an additional HK$480 with wine pairing.