23-11-2013

Another world/1

Three Italian chefs fly to Hong Kong and Macau. The impressions of a fellow traveller

The protagonists of Aria di Alba tour, a trip to

The protagonists of Aria di Alba tour, a trip to show truffle wonders all around the world. In the picture, from the left Giuseppe Iannotti (chef of Kresios), Paolo Montanaro (Tartuflanghe), Christian Milone (Gastronavicella), Michele Dell'Aquila (chef of Aurora at hotel Altira), Eugenio Boer (chef), Mosun Abrate (Abrate & sons) and Emma De Danieli

Being used to notice the shades, the details, to analyse, re-elaborate and concretise, it is very hard for me to sum up the events that took place in Hong Kong and Macau, following 3 chefs, namely Eugenio Boer, Giuseppe Iannotti and Christian Milone, summoned to interpret a raw material such as truffle. It is difficult to describe the free time and the trips to CitySuper’s boutiques, offering all that’s edible around the world – the lunches and the dinners “stolen” from the work schedule, the little cafes in Wan Chai and LKF (Lan Kwai Fong), the dai pai dong, the multi-millionaires clubs, the tallest building, the most breath-taking view, the chewy sweets, the taxi-drivers, the shopping-centres…

Wagyu beef

Wagyu beef

It’s not easy to illustrate an enlightening and cathartic experience such as the Aria di Alba tour. Both because Hong Kong is the heart of the East, so every detail is seen with thrilled eyes due to the novelty, and because it was an unrepeatable experience, that of putting 3 great Italian talents together, inside a kitchen – a true epiphany. Hong Kong is a double-faced city, the contradictions that would clash anywhere else, are fused here into a unique blend. There’s the top, in terms of restaurants, but there are also infinite kiosks, called dai pai dong – road-stalls with a few chairs for a simple lunch – typical of a mixture of cultures that is halfway between the West and the East.

Here you can find the highest number of skyscrapers concentrated in the least possible space with fishermen villages next door. There are shopping centres where stores are as big as palaces, next to tiny artisan shops. In the intricate labyrinth of skyscrapers, paradoxically, you could live your whole life without ever exiting the same building in which are located your house, office, gym, supermarket, various restaurants, a laundry shop, a cinema, a bank, shops and perhaps a rooftop spa. There are seven million inhabitants in a territory smaller than the city of Rome, with clean streets that recall the most intransigent European capitals where people queue religiously, waiting for their turn, while making as much noise as a band of gossipers at the market.

Useful readings

Useful readings

There’s no particular trend in HK. At CitySuper, a food mecca, you feel as if you were inside a pot that encloses all sorts of culinary cultures (of course, only the best of each). In this centre of the world all the habits of consumers are portrayed without great emphasis on product innovation but with a crazy attention to online post-consumption service, to size and packaging: everything is made in small or single-size portions, in order not to overfill the pantry and for your shopping bags not to weigh too much!

Taxi-drivers should deserve a chapter of their own. It is difficult to converse with them on more than the address and the price, partly because of misanthropy, partly because of linguistic difficulties. Hardly law-abiding when it comes to the number of people to get on board, they are very ill-tempered if you try to touch the doors before they action the automatic opening or closing. The only nice taxi-driver was rather drunk, he almost run over more than one road barrier and finally – at the end of the drive – fell asleep in the car after parking it on one side of the road.

2. to be continued


Dal Mondo

Reviews, recommendations and trends from the four corners of the planet, signed by all the authors of Identità Golose

by

Emma De Danieli