If you don’t know your soy from your fish sauce, then 61 Chandos Place might be the best place to start. It’s the home of School of Wok, set up by Hong Kong food aficionado and Cordon Bleu chef Jeremy Pang in 2012 to teach people how to cook Chinese food in their own homes.
On dim sum
Pang teaches various classes, but one of the most popular involves making the traditional Hong Kong dish dim sum. But it’s not just dim sum.
“Dim sum is a really difficult thing to get right,” Pang says. “The ingredients are the most flexible part – if you understand the basic techniques, you can use whatever ingredients you want.” Traditional dim sum hails from Hong Kong teahouses – “that’s why you have it with tea”, Pang says, adding that Chinatown’s Harbour City is the closest you’ll get to proper dim sum here.
On the Hong Kong food scene
“The great thing about Hong Kong is that everyone loves their food so much – everything revolves around it,” Pang says. His Hong Kong foodie hit list is endless, although when he’s in town, he heads straight to Mong Kok for traditional claypot rice and street food, Jordan for street restaurants that serve great seafood, and peninsula town Sai Kung for the freshest fish straight off the fishing boats to barbecue on beach BBQ pits. But the best food he’s had “in years” was sweet and sour pork at a simple street stall in the Mid Levels – sometimes the street food is just as good as the fine dining.
On Chinese food in London
And if you can’t get away to Hong Kong, head to Chinatown or Bayswater – just remember balance. Pang adds: “Order a sweet and sour dish, a steamed fish, a grilled dish, a vegetable dish and rice alongside” for a true Cantonese meal. Sorted.
To win a home-cooked dinner for six by Jeremy Pang, or two vouchers for the School of Wok, click here.
