Hawker Chan’s chicken rice wows fine dining customers in New York

NEW YORK — The world of fine dining doesn’t change much. If you need evidence, look to the Michelin guide’s 2017 lists, where pretty much all the three star places look the same as they did the year before, and the year before that, etc, etc.

So it was audacious of Tiger Beer — the Singaporean based beer company that’s making a big push into the United States — to try to shake things up in the upper echelons of the restaurant world. They did so by bringing together two unlikely chefs in a series of dinners: Christopher Kostow, whose Restaurant at Meadowood in Napa Valley is a constant on the Bay Area’s Michelin three star list; and Chan Hon Meng, owner of the Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle stall that shocked a lot of the world (and themselves) when they garnered a Michelin star earlier this year.

The two chefs teamed up to cook over three nights at Indochine restaurant in downtown Manhattan; the run ended on Dec 9. (Don’t think about trying to get in to the event, which was unofficially billed as a four-star Michelin meal; the line outside the restaurant was as long as if Hamilton had announced a spontaneous evening performance.) It was Hawker (chef) Chan’s first trip to the United States. He’s generally too busy at home to travel. He arrives for work every day at 5am and lines at his stall average a two hour wait; after the news of his Michelin star, the wait has stretched to three hours. He may sell the recipe for his chicken for US$2 million (S$2.9 million).

LOWBROW DELIGHTS

Kostow and Hawker Chan’s meal, labelled Tiger Streats (for street eats), was all about high and low. Half of each table in the space (which was festooned with paper flags)was set with water glasses; the other half with plastic cups. The chefs divided up duties for the three-course dinner. The first dish was Kostow’s: He prepared Whelk Lasagna, a mousse of the shellfish layered between seaweed pasta with roasted broccoli and whelk broth. If it sounds weird, it was; not untasty, but not a crowd pleaser. The second course, which Hawker Chan served family style, was a platter of his famed braised chicken. Drowned in a soy sauce-based lacquer and served with fragrant long-grain rice, it was richly flavoured and sticky, hard to eat and delicious. And hands down, the highlight of the meal.

Most fine dining chefs, especially ones as talented as Kostow, would be pissed that their dish wasn’t the best. Not Kostow. “I believe there’s not intrinsically greater value in fancy food. There’s nothing inherently great about fine dining,” he told me. “I’d rather have a good burrito than mediocre foie gras.” He continued: “Who wants to eat whelk lasagna when you can eat that chicken?” Not that he set out to make an inferior dish; he had just decided to let Hawker Chan be the star. The older, energetic chef is half the size of Kostow, speaks English via a translator and is most at home when he’s whacking his mahogany-coloured chickens into pieces with a cleaver.

HIGH STRATEGY

Kostow believes that you have to work hard to make food that justifies that high price point. “We’re in northern California where we have people with a lot of disposable income and an inclination towards creativity, maybe more so than in New York,” he said. “People there will take chances. But that doesn’t mean that you don’t have to push your food a lot harder than if you were doing something simple.” The Tasting Menu at Meadowood is US$330 per guest; the Counter Menu is US$500 each. The chicken at the hawker stall is about S$2 per plate.

Kostow and Hawker Chan collaborated on dessert, Coconut Pudding with Glutinous Rice Balls and Red Beans, via Skype. Kostow made the pudding; Chan prepared the rice balls and red bean sauce. Chan told me through his translator, that in China, the round balls represent working “happily and merrily” together. Kostow told Chan that he wanted to open his own Kelp Lasagna stall next to Chan’s Chicken and Rice one in Singapore. Chan laughed. “You’ll steal all my business,” he said. Everyone laughed at that. BLOOMBERG