Alvin Leung

Alvin Leung is a Chinese engineer born in London and raised in Toronto, Canada. Five years ago he opened an independent restaurant in Hong Kong, the only Michelin-starred place in town outside a hotel or a shopping center. He considers himself as a self-taught although he’s much more professional than many others, just because he decided to build a path on his own, starting with three very specific teachers to get its bases:

Adria

,

Blumenthal

and Robuchon.

Apart from the randomness of his restaurant name, Bo Innovation, which pre-existed but later revealed to be a good one, Alvin is a true force of nature: spectacular when directing his work, he’s even greater when we analyze the conceptual and creative food-substance.
Let’s always keep in mind that he was not born in China, a country that boasts something like 40,000 traditional recipes, adding completely different culinary and historical realities. Perhaps, just because of this, he could draw a goal free from secular knowledge’s constraints, to provide Chinese cuisine with a different, new direction, modernizing it through the most current techniques and with an engineering approach that builds a dish upon Chinese bases but introducing ingredients from other worlds (eg Arborio rice). The result? Far lighter and more exciting in each direction, his recipes never loses soul and persistence of flavors to give fun and clear memories of food. With goals that are always, absolutely, Chinese.

Leung introduces himself as a demo-chef and his cooking style as “X-treme Chinese”. His 15-courses’ menu, tasted at a table overlooking the kitchen is perfect: everything is refined beyond the glass before our dish is finished. «My next step is to become an intelligent chef», able to summarize the most diverse cultures and products, gradually assuming this or that setting.
Finally, a tip: don’t be fooled by his rock and roll image, colorful hair or tattoos, that's just the appearance. The substance is quite another.