Eating out is passé, hiring a private chef is the true sign of class: how Hong Kong embraced the ultimate foodie luxury – fine dining in your front room

It’s ironic that traditional delicacies that require a high degree of skill and long hours of labour are disappearing from menus at established Chinese restaurants pushed to the edge by Hong Kong’s pandemic-era restrictions – only for those things to be offered by hobbyists who cooked up careers out of viral demand during those same dine-out restrictions. One such newly minted private chef is Marissa Lau, who’s been busy adding dishes such as eight treasure duck and taro-smoked duck to her menu – items that require hours across several days to prep, and which she perfected in her spare time during last year’s social restrictions. Lau had already been cooking up comfort food and delivering it to paying customers for some time by then. Initially, she launched the @themmkitchen Instagram account just to document her culinary experiments, “and then slowly, I got more followers, and then someone approached me if I can go cook at her home,” she remembers. “It went pretty well, she [the client] posted it on her Instagram too, and then from there it was word of mouth.” 100 Top Tables: the 100 best restaurants in Hong Kong for 2023, revealed Before becoming a private chef, the Hong Kong-raised Lau was an entrepreneur who ran a fashion business, and is often spotted at brand and society events. After cooking for a special someone from the Rosewood Hotel Group, she was invited to do a four-day pop-up at their Hong Kong property in 2021 – a real challenge given Lau is used to doing everything from the morning market run and mise en place, to plating and serving, alone and at home. Guests were treated to many of Lau’s signatures: hairy crab roe yellow croaker fish dumplings in sour pickle fish soup, Thai-style steamed wild Macau sole, Spanish red prawns with noodles and hairy crab roe fish maw claypot rice (the last of which has inspired quite a few copycats around town, Lau has since noticed). The self-taught chef enjoyed having a full kitchen to work with – the complexity of the dishes she can prepare at others’ homes is occasionally compromised by the limitations of their kitchens. Another private chef raised in the city, Nero Ip, says he enjoys the challenge and interactions he has when cooking in other peoples’ homes. Ip, too, was a fixture on Hong Kong’s social scene. Prior to launching Nero’s Kitchen, offering home banquets featuring Shunde-style cuisine, which isn’t so often seen in high-end restaurants in the city, he ran a luxury floral design business with floral artist Kirk Cheng, which saw a dip in clientele when events all but stopped in 2020. Hong Kong’s Best Pastry Chef on the challenges of creating fine treats Ip, whose signature dishes include a scallion oil shredded chicken, is also mostly self-taught, although he learned many of the essential principles from his father. “My father runs factories in China, and he had a farm with pigs and chickens at the factory, so every weekend he would host lunches and dinners with business contacts, and he loved to talk about food,” he says. “He would talk about seasoning, how to slaughter chickens, how long to cook things. From TV and talking to chefs, he picked up things here and there. And he was a science major, so he would do multiple trials side by side.” Like his father, Ip loves to host, and did so often during the pandemic. Before long, he was hosting at friends’ homes and then customers’ homes. He too has done pop-up dinners at restaurants, including Rosewood Hong Kong and Duddell’s, and this June will take part in a four-hands dinner alongside Siu Siu Kitchen, yet another private home chef who comes from the Sham Tseng Chan Kee roast goose family. (It’s fully booked already, naturally.) Opportunities beyond the home kitchen abound for all these players – Siu Siu Kitchen’s Instagram page indicates her calendar is full for 2023, while Lau says she’s full for the next two months, with a waiting list that could take her into 2024 if she were willing to take bookings that far ahead. Ip is now juggling dinner duties with the floral events that are back and bigger than ever, as well as working with his partner, Julien-Loïc Garin, on a jewellery business, The Collection by JLG. “My goal is to do just two dinners a week,” says Ip. “Kin Food Hall has a new pop-up in Central Market and my fish maw noodles are there. I’ve just done a fundraising dinner for Heep Hong [Society], an NGO I support. The next step … I want to cook in different countries,” he says, having hosted a dinner in Paris last year for designer Olivia Putman. “I’ve been invited to Shanghai and Taiwan. I’m also working on a new menu, which reflects more how I host at home, more how Nero and Julien host, with a little French and Chinese influence.” How 100 Top Tables’ Best Chef Silas Li is transforming Chinese cooking As for Lau, she’s consulted on the menu for hotpot restaurant Lets Pot, creating soup bases and other dishes, and wants to work on a cookbook in the future. Despite the demand, a restaurant is definitely not on her agenda. “At this point, I feel like if I were to open up a space, I might need to hire, and I’m not ready to have other people cooking my dishes,” she says. “I like being in control of my food to make sure it’s perfectly done.” Want more stories like this? Follow Style on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube.