In an unassuming setting The Chairman serves what is probably the best authentic home-grown food focusing on farm-to-table ingredients sourced directly from local farmers and fishermen.

PROFILE
After spending more than a decade in Canberra and opening a series of restaurants there, Danny Yip moved back to Hong Kong in 1997 to found a trading company before selling up and going back into the restaurant business with The Chairman. The concept is a back-to-basics Cantonese restaurant that focuses on fresh local ingredients either grown on the restaurant’s own farm or sourced directly from local farmers and fishermen, with Danny’s team doing their own pickling and making their own sauces.

MUST TRY: Steamed flowery crab with aged Chinese wine and rice noodles.

AMBIENCE
An unassuming big-windowed frontage leads to an unassuming interior, with a retro feel and an overall white décor with rosewood chairs. The restaurant is on two levels, with private rooms.

SERVICE
The staff are well informed on the origins of the food and sauces, and are efficient and friendly.

FOOD
Cantonese food is of course always about fresh ingredients but the economics of restaurants in Hong Kong often leads to the cutting of corners. Not so at The Chairman. Chickens and pigs are raised locally in the New Territories, and are fed with good quality forage. Live fish and shrimp are sourced from fishermen who go out to sea early in the morning to bring in their catch. Vegetables are sourced from small farmers working the fields at Yuen Long, or from The Chairman’s own farm at Sheung Shui, which is used as the venue for curing preserved meat and making different kinds of pickles. Shrimp oil, spicy oil, chicken oil and lemongrass oil are all produced in-house through slow cooking.

PRICING
HK$105 to HK$398 (fish at market prices)

SUMMARY
Prices are slightly higher than would be paid at a comparable Cantonese restaurant, but the attention to home-grown food and the farm-to-table freshness is worth every extra dollar. One really can tell the difference in the quality, from the soy sauce upwards.