When stars align: A four-hands dinner with culinary stars
Hands down, I had the best seat in the house at the recent four-hands dinner at the Grand Hyatt featuring chefs Margarita Forés and Hong Kong-based Vicky Cheng.
That’s because, ever conscious of our unpredictable traffic, I like to give myself a generous traveling time allowance and consequently arrive early at these events.
The upside of this was stepping into Penthouse 66 when the reception was not quite set up yet, and so I wandered about on my own, past a cooking station manned by busy chefs with that gorgeous 66th-floor view as a backdrop, into a room where the star chefs of the night were in a huddle with their servers.
Unmindful of me on the sidelines, chefs Vicky and Gaita took turns discussing their dishes with the staff, carefully explaining how each dish was to be served, what dinnerware it was to be served on and what it was made of. It was fun listening to chef Gaita elucidate the particular virtues of the crab we call “bakla” to the Hong Kong visitors, a best-of-all-worlds situation with both yummy fat and generous meat.
From there this star food event went from good to even better every step of the way. The real program started off with a trio of Hong Kong-themed cocktails concocted by bartender Sean de Vera, inspired by iconic sights and flavors of the former colony. He created a vodka tonic-based Avenue of Stars and captured the delights of tea in Yum Cha, served in a tea cup with a crispy palmier. There was a lovely, green-tinted cocktail based on the melon-flavored liqueur Midori, which he christened the Hong Kong Blossom.
We did a kitchen tour where I must say I peppered chef Vicky with questions about how he reconciled his French training in top restaurants like Boulud with his return to his Cantonese roots. Chef Vicky has a Michelin-starred restaurant in Hong Kong named Vea and another one, Wing which is ranked among the top 50 restaurants in Asia. In addition, he was ranked 35 out of the 100 Best Chefs in the world!
Listening to him discuss the experiments, failures and the learning curve with such joy, you know you’re talking to a chef who’s excited to get to work at his two highly rated restaurants, eager for the challenges of the day.
Listening to Gaita Fores, on the other hand, was like conversing with an old friend, a foodie, at that, about her recent ingredient discoveries and those guardians of heirloom recipes from whom she has to wrestle secrets. Chef Gaita hardly needs any introduction given her beloved Cibo chain, her other popular restaurants like Lusso and upcoming Margarita, plus an equally impressive lineup of awards.
The purpose of this dinner collaboration between these two star chefs was to promote Hong Kong’s upcoming Wine and Dine Festival in October, and Taste Around Town in November. These two annual events draw foodies, chefs and fine food purveyors from all over the world for a gastronomic extravaganza. Mind you, a food extravaganza in a city people visit just to eat is almost mind-boggling. The Hong Kong Tourism Board, who boasted that the year has already seen half a million visitors from the Philippines, wants to give travel-savvy Pinoys enough time to make arrangements to attend these food festivals.
The dinner that followed was superlative. There was a foursome of delicious dishes billed as “snacks” where each bite was better than the one before: an ukoy on a bed of kinilaw, a flavorsome braided eggplant, a clear(!) century egg on tasty noodles and a banana-heart salad with our local fish maw.
The second dish, a thick mud crab soup served in a lovely green bowl set amid branches of calamansi with fruit still on the stem, had us exclaiming with delight, and the Bulacan river prawn accompanied by a Hong Kong noodle pancit that followed was even tastier.
“But,” Gaita admonished me in an aside, “the succeeding dishes will be even better!”
I told Gaita that we guests felt so lucky to be at this dinner, enjoying this delicious food so that we could write about it. We felt this could have been a festival enjoyed by more people, but then there were limitations with ingredients and other resources.
The next course, a sea cucumber spring roll, exemplified chef Vicky’s dedication to Chinese food but with a twist, adding the crispy ubod (palm heart) pieces for textural contrast.
The last dish was a true collaboration between the two chefs, featuring pomfret (pompano) with abalone and jackfruit on a bed of savory rice. Delish is an understatement.
Could dessert possibly outdo all this deliciousness?
It did.
The mango mochi had me wishing for more, but that was before I tasted the pili nut hojaldres, a dessert definitely courtesy of chef Gaita.
If a collab between a top Filipino and Hong Kong chef was aimed to get us excited about visiting Hong Kong, they certainly succeeded. Put the possibility of delicious food together with the prospect of revisiting a beloved Filipino destination, and your gastronomic stars will truly align.