Rocking The Wok

I wanted to show you a day in the life of a regular chef, having busted my chops in five-star hotel kitchens before running my own restaurant. So I went on the ‘hot' kitchen line at FINDS last Friday for a full shift, but found a better story on the way.

As the bullets of sweat threatened to obscure my vision, I knew I was done for when I saw one young Chinese chef bark out to his partner on the line for a copper pot and saw him throw it through a small hole in a huge suspended plate warmer, between stacks of crockery, bowls, what-have-you, several feet through, and the other WITHOUT LOOKING catch it with his outstretched hand to finish off yet another perfect, fabulous creation. All this while executive chef Jaakko Sorsa chatted with his mobile wedged between shoulder and ear as he reduced a red wine sauce for the veal Wallenberger.

Now, cooking a lovely dinner party for your friends in the comfort of your own home is great, but producing dish after dish in a huge crush of hundreds of orders in +55˚C heat for hours on end is a whole other world. They're local Hong Kongers keen to master their craft in Western cooking techniques and rise up the ranks: perhaps the new Disciples Escoffier, hailed as the father of Western cooking, as headed by the new Hong Kong chapter president Sorsa, so dedicated to good cooking, once under hail of gunfire as a peacekeeper-chef in South Lebanon cooked a mean roasted lamb for the troops.

Lure of the Line

I tried this in a raucous railside pork joint in Seoul, the blastingly hot wok galleys of a Chinese junk, a fugu restaurant in Tokyo, a snake shack in Shenzhen and a really creepy ‘exotic foods' joint in Guangzhou where I fried live scorpions to the delight of the local patrons.

Back to the line: Clearly the highlight of the evening for these budding stars was the chance to produce potential dishes for the lunch menu's Asian side, the first such opportunity to see their own dish on a restaurant menu they had ever had. So after a morning of simmering soups, sauces, stocks, cutting veggies at warp speed my high-speed camera couldn't even catch, filleting salmons in seconds as I hacked away to their obvious amusement, cold- and hot-smoking meats and seafoods, and possibly my favorite, baking fresh bread, we got ready for the lunch rush. A quick note: chefs can't use their fingers to taste sauces anymore, it's all little spoons. And you've always got water handy. "You've got to start drinking water early as you're going to lose at least a litre an hour during service," warned Sorsa. "The first signs of dehydration are feeling tired, kind of like falling asleep at the wheel, and feeling thirsty." The first time I tried this article, the air-con was under repair, and I nearly passed out. The second, much better, but of course the chef, once pictured in the desert next to a thermometer reading 54˚C, turned it away from the line so the food didn't go cold while waiting for servers to rush in and pick it up after the mighty ‘ping' signaling pickup.

The Rush

Lunch as we all know is a body slam of 1pm-2pm, buffets popular (FINDS features a wide range of salads and several add-on main options, both Asian - what the lads are hoping for tonight - and Scandinavian) and menus generally limited to sets - this is to make it easier for the kitchen to get hit with 100+ orders within minutes, and get everybody out within good time, for whoever still works in an office. The chefs are prowling like fighters before a battle, and that is what it is. The chatter of the chit machine spewing orders starts to sound like a machine gun, and we're off. With buffets + mains, you get kind of a warning: they're at the buffet now, but will order a salmon and a stir-fry when ‘fired' so you can get ready. Dinner is harder because apps come in no notice and you've got to make the hot ones right away, while trying to remember to prep the mains for the ‘fire' signal, or the cold kitchen makes a cold app, but you've got to remember the main is coming. It gets confusing when you have one station doing seafood and another doing noodles, while another does the vegetables all for one dish; the ‘finish' man puts it all together, has a quick final taste, garnishes with foam / herbs etc. then sends it on its way.

Lunch gone in a blur, it's cleanup and prep for dinner, where chef Sampo Laukkanen, Sorsen's No. 2, runs the ship and explains how all the dishes are made, total calm under pressure. But just before was the tasting test of our budding young chefs, their creations ready: today's presenter was Ah-Kuen, who prefers a Western kitchen; "The cuisine is so interesting," he explains, with support from mates Lap, Wah, On, Tung, and Chun, and whose best dishes will be featured in upcoming lunches.

Sorsa lets me know the point of all this: "We follow the principles of Auguste Escoffier, representing chefs eager to commit themselves to safeguarding and supporting quality and flavour in food products, promoting professional expertise. This happens by offering training, opportunities and networks for young chefs."

And this old dog? Feeling the pull again...