A Hong Kong garden party
As well as classic Cantonese food, the Lei Garden chain of restaurants gives Nicholas Lander an insight into the Chinese group's management stylePublished: March 15 2008 01:58 | Last updated: March 15 2008 01:58
We were walking down the stairs from the Lei Garden restaurant at the CNT building in Hong Kong’s Wanchai district when an investment banker friend explained: “It’s a bull market here for taxis and restaurants at the moment. It’s hard to find a taxi after dinner unless you have already pre-booked one and, unlike even a year ago, it’s much, much harder to book a table on the day. At some places you now need to book even a week in advance.”
Neither of us could hide our enthusiasm for the dinner we had just enjoyed, even though it had begun somewhat worryingly. My request for Cantonese food had been welcomed by our friends, who had booked the table with typical consideration but they had also gone to the trouble of pre-ordering the food without realising that looking at a menu is, for any restaurant correspondent, almost as exciting as eating the food.
My disappointment lasted the couple of minutes it took to walk up the stairs and into the first-floor restaurant. It was vast, brightly-lit, packed and noisy, with a decor that can only be described as mundane. In contrast to Europe and the US, there were clusters of waiting staff everywhere. All the waiters were wired at the ear to the kitchen and reception, a link that doubtless contributed to their extraordinary efficiency throughout the evening.
Our private room was taken up by a large round table, a revolving Lazy Susan and a small, discreet but long menu. But before I really had a chance to take it all in, the conversation at our table turned to the news that Hong Kong was abolishing its duty on wine imports, which should lead to cheaper restaurant wine.
One dining companion confessed that he had missed Asian food so much on a recent business trip to the Middle East that, on his arrival back in Hong Kong, he had called in at a restaurant before going back to see his children (they would have been in bed, he added).
Another explained how a brief stint working at the Lei Garden branch in Singapore had destroyed his long-held dream of a career in the restaurant business. Until then, he had held a series of high-powered jobs in IT in the US but a love of food kept nagging away at him to make a career change. When I asked him for more specific reasons for the end of the love affair, he said: “The first thing I realised is that running a successful restaurant is not the romantic notion anyone on the outside believes it is. It’s the attention to detail in everything that is so obviously crucial. I remember most clearly the spot checks that used to take place in all of the different branches. It would be just after lunch and someone from head office would arrive unannounced, call on a particular manager and conduct a stocktake on all the chopsticks, for example. ”
The Lei Garden’s approach to keeping its chefs on their mark is quite particular. Every Wednesday afternoon, a tasting is held at one of its 18 branches throughout Asia. The head chefs are asked to produce a series of their more standard dishes and some new ones (changing the menu frequently has been another vital factor in this group’s success). In the west, the emphasis at such tastings is invariably on identifying the best and on encouraging the chefs, but here the opposite is true. The style is to highlight what is wrong as much as what is right and the chefs are often humbled rather than elevated. If the chefs begin to think they are too good, the philosophy runs, they will leave tomorrow.
Certainly, there was no mention of the chefs involved in our dinner anywhere on the menu and no sign of them at the end of the meal. Instead, the meal was a vindication of a well-run, talented kitchen working in harmony with industrious waiting staff.
There was also vindication of not just the pure, unadulterated pleasures of Cantonese food but also of the importance that the contrasting texture of the ingredients plays in the sequence of dishes. This marks a big difference between what Asians find so exciting in their food compared with people in the west.
The meal began with a series of small servings of what were referred to as appetisers and included, most memorably, crisp slivers of puffer fish and fried sheets of bean curd filled with mushrooms.
This was followed by the return of a large Alaskan king crab that had initially been brought into the room crawling over a large silver tray but now reappeared steamed and cut into mouth-sized pieces, cooked with sweet Hua Diao wine on top of a mound of beaten eggs. Contrasting textures and colours followed with a soothing dish of a poached fish puff, made from the meat of the white fish, floating in a bowl of creamy fish soup and sautéed mantis shrimp with salt and pepper. The two final dishes, steamed rice with sausage, liver and wind-dried duck, and another soup, this time of a poached cabbage in a thick broth, had been thoughtfully chosen to protect us all from the winter cold.
Subsequently, I learnt that the Lei Garden group, with numerous branches in Hong Kong, two in Guangzhou and outposts in Beijing and Singapore, was created 30 years ago by Chan Shu Kit, now in his mid-70s. The son of a general in the Kuomintang army, Chan has successfully applied the lessons he learnt in military school and as an engineer to what is obviously now a highly disciplined business – one whose management approach is also influenced by his personal beliefs, such as ensuring that his staff meals offer a good daily intake of fruit.
More columns at www.ft.com/lander
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008
Comments