When I've had too much to drink I have an automatic brain app that kicks in; the kebab app - or should that be keb-app? It's not a conscious decision, not many of them are at that time of night (or rather morning). It's a biological - or chemical perhaps - reaction, born of some old gin-riddled wives tale that eating on a pickled stomach is a good thing and lessens the pain of one's swimming head, waves of nausea and of the utterly unproductive next day watching reruns of Twilight.

Whether there's any truth in this is no longer relevant. I'm a slave to keb-app, and the Beyrouth kebab shop, a stumble down from Drop or a weary march up from Kee, is my, and many of my friends', local kebab central. We may not remember seeing each other there the next day, but it's fun to compare gossip over a shawarma or a falafel, garlic, mint and yogurt sauce oozing out, the incredibly hospitable and patient Lebanese Assaf brothers looking out for us like benevolent uncles.

Bootcamp Chef

So you can imagine my excitement when I heard that kebabs were part of an innovative new diet. Called Bootcamp Chef, I wondered at first if it made your digestion work so hard your innards somehow got gradually more and more toned and fit, and therefore more efficient at keeping you slim. In which case everything bad would in fact be good. This would handily support my attachment to the ‘anything I want' diet, which has made up most of my life. I believe if you treat your body like a temple it's going to make you pay painfully when you become a heretic, so better not to believe in the first place.

In fact, the name comes from the tough-guy workouts run by trainer and Bootcamp.com.hk founder Nathan Solia. Waking Hongkongers up, putting them through some blistering stretching, aerobic and strength exercises, and delivering them back to their sedentary lives one surprisingly addictive session at a time, Bootcamp Chef is the logical extension to the regime. 

I picked up the Bootcamp Chef menu between mouthfuls of falafel one night; baked potatoes slathered in chilli con carne, Mediterranean dishes with chicken, lamb and beef, soups, salads, how tough could this be?

In fact the secret to its healthiness is in the cooking, according to Charbel Assaf, self-made chef, certified nutritionist and Bootcamp fitness instructor. Unfeasibly healthy looking for a kebab shop owner, the javelin-throwing, power-wrestling, scuba diving, paragliding, aikido-fighting, jujitsu-practicing athlete explained, "Nutrition must be part of the game because I see a lot of people doing sport but not reaching their goals," he says. "Nutrition and fitness work 50-50 together, you need both for the best results."

Assaf and Solia worked on the menus together. Soups and salads focus on ramping up the fibre, minerals and vitamin intake, while high quality meat, fish and beans deliver protein, and snacks like fruit or nuts ensure that the body keeps a high metabolism between meals. And the meals are designed to be ordered in toto - have a week or month's worth delivered meal by meal to your office and/or home at lunch and dinner times, and your diet will be in the capable hands of experts.

The Healthy Kebab

At this point in our interview I'm still dying to know how a kebab can be described as healthy. And my answer comes disappointingly free of garlic sauce, hummus, mayonnaise and chips on the side.

"When you cook a kebab it's barbecued," says Assaf. "The fat doesn't stay on the meat, it drips out during cooking, leaving the flavour in the meat. Of course it's never going to be zero fat, but it's far less than if it was fried." He goes on to explain that while a kebab with a small amount of mint and yogurt sauce and chilli is allowable, the kebabs that are ordered throughout the night at Beyrouth rarely meet his Bootcamp Chef regime standards. And of course the amount of empty calories in alcohol that have already been consumed before clients arrive mean there's little point in scrimping on the sauces by then. But a word of advice here - while going veggie may be better for the world, their Aussie imported lamb or chicken kebabs are a healthier choice fat-wise than the deep fried and phenomenally crunchy and tasty falafel. Which sucks.

The disarming thing about the Bootcamp Chef menu is that it doesn't frown on red meat and white pita bread. Assaf was brought up on traditional Lebanese mezze and shawarmas, typically a range of salads and barbecued meat, alongside potatoes or pita bread. "The combination of ingredients in Lebanese food is very balanced," he says. And it seems to be balanced food in moderation that he is advising. Not actually so tough-man Bootcamp at all.

Testing the Menu

So one rainy Monday I surfed www.bootcampchef.fbw.hk and had a look around. Deciding on what you want a day ahead of time is the first hurdle to cross. Planning ahead isn't my thing, who knows who might be on for lunch tomorrow at the drop of a hat. But for the sake of this column I bit the bullet. I searched in vain for the chicken kebab with rice but annoyingly it was on the menu I'd picked up at the shop but not on the online list, so I went for the next best thing, Mediterranean lamb with rice and Greek salad. I paid online, the per meal price of $150, and I sat back in anticipation of tomorrow's lunch being delivered between 12.30 and 1pm.

And it was.

And mostly it was great. The salad was tasty and bursting with freshness, made irresistible by the feta, but there didn't seem to be any vinaigrette - too fattening?

The lamb was really tasty and the rice was just perfect. Together they were a little on the dry side as there was literally no sauce, but the subtle flavours just about made up for it. And what's great is that although I was ‘allowed' to eat all this at one sitting, it was too much. It ended up being lunch and supper. Bonus. An orange was dessert.

So the one overriding niggle that was in the back of my stingy mind - that this was a bit steep at $150 was pretty much silenced. Two meals for $150 is doable. And of course you're paying for the expertise behind the cooking and prepping - plus the quality of food.

The acid test... would I get it again? Maybe, but I'm not sure. The planning aspect puts me off, and as it looks so much like a takeaway visually, it still seems a little pricey. But it tasted good - and healthy in a good way - and it's nice to have someone else do the heavy lifting in terms of nutrition, cooking and delivering.

However eating Bootcamp Chef sober didn't compare with scoffing Beyrouth trashed. The keb-app doesn't mind being activated out of drinking hours but that mint yogurt and chilli breath satisfaction the morning after was so missing. 

Images: images 5, 6, 7 courtesy of author, other images courtesy of Bootcamp Chef.