When I spoke with Kwong Wai Keung, he was the chef of T’ang Court at The Langham, Hong Kong, a restaurant holding three Michelin stars and one of the most decorated traditional Cantonese kitchens in the world.
Kwong speaks in The Luxury of Attention to what it means to pursue perfection inside a tradition. Most chefs in the book describe perfection as a personal standard. For him the standard is set by Cantonese cooking itself. The perfect dish is the one that brings out the best in its ingredients while staying faithful to the tradition it belongs to, and the kitchen’s evolution is bounded by that tradition. In turn, the tradition stays alive only because the kitchen practices it every day. That mutual obligation is, as I argue in the chapter, the substance of what the restaurant sells. He also speaks to a shift he sees from the pass: diners are more conscious of their health, which changes how he selects ingredients and balances meat and vegetables on a plate, and which makes food safety a matter he insists on.
“T’ang Court specializes in presenting very traditional Cantonese cuisine, so when we think about perfection, the perfect dish is one that upholds and brings out the best flavors and textures of the ingredients, while also staying true to authentic Cantonese tradition.” Kwong Wai Keung, chef, T’ang Court at The Langham, Hong Kong
In the book, Kwong Wai Keung appears in Chapter 11, Staying True, where his kitchen gives the chapter’s discipline of identity a different cultural inflection from the European and American examples around it, and in Chapter 14, The Future of Luxury and Craft, where he describes how the wellness shift the resorts are building into their architecture is being built, in his kitchen, into the plate.
“I always emphasize the importance of food safety in relation to the health of our diners.” Kwong Wai Keung, chef, T’ang Court at The Langham, Hong Kong