BRIEFING MY KITCHEN


The British chef tells Tina Nielsen about the challenges of running a sustainable restaurant in Hong Kong


Oli Marlow


I have worked in hospitality for the past 15 years, always in high-end restaurants. I have worked in the US, Norway, Australia, Canada, the UK and now Hong Kong. For the last four years I've worked with Simon Rogan. The restaurant Roganic Hong Kong only offers tasting menus in the evening. It is a sustainable-driven, farm-to-table restaurant. We’re one of a handful of restaurants in Hong Kong doing this. There is very little in the way of growing your own vegetables here, everything is imported so it is hard to promote sustainability, but that is at the forefront of everything we do. We are a restaurant that prides itself on being seasonal and local. We try to


avoid signature dishes because it is boring for the chefs. I change the menu a lot. This is a fairly big restaurant; we do 60


covers, and we have 15 chefs working in the kitchen at any one time. Most of the chefs – about 90% – are local from Hong Kong and many have worked with us since we opened three years ago. Half the kitchen is open; the pastry section is like a little dessert counter, which is quite fun. You can sit at the counter after your dessert at the end of your meal if you like. The rest of the kitchen is out of sight; it is a traditional kitchen. It is quite open plan, so everybody can help each other out. It has a lot of daylight for Hong Kong,


which is nice – there are a lot of basement kitchens here.


The site was previously a Japanese


restaurant, so it was set up with woks and cooking gas fires. With our style it wasn’t going to work so we changed it all to induction. That is what fits our needs best. A key piece of equipment is the


Evogrow, a machine for growing micro herbs inside the restaurant. You sow your seeds in these little trays, then they go into a machine that feeds them the nutrients so you can grow whatever herb you want. Our guests sit in the restaurant, right


next to these machines where they can see the herbs being grown. It really shouts out the whole sustainability element.


The pastry section is open to the restaurant – like a dessert counter


90% of our chefs are local, from Hong Kong and many have been with us since we opened three years ago


Growing our own herbs is key to showing our sustainability element


130 For more go to fcsi.org


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