The local champion collaborated with William Tang Tat-chi and Hennessy for an auspicious Chinese New Year banquet for the contemporary palate
There seems to be no stopping for chef May Chow since she was awarded Best Female Chef of 2017 by Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, after receiving our inaugural Local Champion award for the 2017 edition of Hong Kong Tatler Best Restaurants. At the start of the Year of the Rooster, Chow’s name adorned a traditional Cantonese fa paai, a two-storey high bamboo-frame “flower plaque” made by master Wing-kei Choi, right outside the Tang clan's ancestral hall in Yuen Long.
Used at wedding celebrations, a shop opening or a festival in rural Hong Kong, this one was commissioned by Hennessy to commemorate the William Tang Tat-chi x May Chow Hennessy Appreciation Dinner held at the imposing 700-year-old Tang Ancestral Hall. After China and Taiwan, this was Hennessy’s third stop in a cognac pairing initiative that seeks to engage with Chinese culinary culture in more profoundly innovative ways.
For dinner, Chow dished out a victorious reinterpretation of the rustic poon choi (Cantonese for “basin dish”), an iconic Hong Kong culinary creation and the one-pot wonder that local villagers sit down together for during Chinese New Year. Half of the eight side dishes were prepared by the villagers in accordance with their traditional recipes. The other half were updated and reinvented by Chow, creative tweaked into a delicious, coherent fusion.
See also: May Chow on elevating a dim sum classic
Inside the heritage building decked out in red lanterns and giant paper fans, fashion designer Tang and the young chef stood on a stage in front of the austere altar to recount the engaging history of poon choi, considered a native dish of Hong Kong.