Family members adored his cooking just as much as he enjoyed working at the wok, and started bringing their friends to meals. Word spread, and these friends started to bring their friends, until the happy chef was feeding ever larger numbers of people many of whom he'd never met before, but at considerable personal expense.
"How would it be," suggested someone, "if we paid for our meals, and then you could give us your favourite dishes and we'd all be happy?"
And so what had been a private party became a "private kitchen" or "hidden door" restaurant with very limited seating, only open to those whose delighted friends passed on the name and number of the chef.
Hong Kong's energetic entrepreneurial spirit ensured the idea was swiftly copied until many private homes were receiving paying guests for a variety of cuisines. Some were short-lived, but others became so successful they moved to commercial premises, although still on a small scale, and often in unexpected, tucked away locations.
Now visitors to Hong Kong who plan ahead can book themselves everything from classic Cantonese to first-rate French cooking in spaces such as former offices, an antique shop, or afloat on a tiny sampan with a single table.
"As far as I know I was the first," says Master Ng, chef-proprietor of Red Kitchen, "more than 20 years ago."
He was eventually enticed away from home cooking to work for a famous Chinese restaurant group before starting Red Kitchen in a flea market in the leafy New Territories, where a former candle-making factory is now filled with assorted small shops, stalls and restaurants.
Every lunchtime Master Ng offers meals to a handful of guests in part of a small and cluttered antiques shop. This may not be a private house, but it feels little different. The shop's owner sits in one corner scanning the Internet, there's horse racing from Happy Valley playing on a muted television, and the space is otherwise full of traditional furniture, calligraphy, carved screens and homely knick-knacks.
A feast of five Cantonese dishes and one soup is produced, including Ng's most famous dish: Boiled boned duck stuffed with sticky rice and chestnuts, which falls apart into a mouth-pleasing mix of soft textures and gentle flavours. The duck also makes a soup with Chinese herbs that give it a rich mulberry colour and a pleasant tang.
The manager of a nearby wine shop who speaks some English acts as server, and others from the market help Ng set up tables for up to 85 in its public areas in the evening. But the chef is clear his operation still counts as a private kitchen.
"At a restaurant anyone can walk in and choose from the menu. But at a private kitchen there is no menu, the chef must have a very good reputation because there's no advertising, and you cannot just walk in. Only that chef can be the chef, and he can't ask his brother to fill in."
The space is still technically regarded as private, which is one of the ways the owners of hidden doors creatively get round licensing complications. Back in Hong Kong Island's busy Wanchai district another private kitchen manages to run in a sixth-floor office space by notionally being a private members' club. Despite its location in a district that's more Suzie Wong than crepes Suzette, Le Blanc offers an ambitious menu of casually executed French dishes. There's an element of choice gained by ticking boxes for up to nine courses including bread, pate, and a mid-meal palate-cleansing sorbet.
The restaurant can actually seat around 50, although each table is in a separate space barely larger than itself created by drapes suspended from rough wooden beams. The environment is not one for the dignified contemplation of the cuisine, but bright and busy, with bursts of laughter swirling from neighbouring cubicles. The decor is a jumble of chandeliers, Christmas lights, candelabra, dried flowers, ceramics, battered prints of famous oil paintings and mismatched furniture.
The food is a Hong Kong idea of French, and the standard enthusiastically amateur although almost all the ingredients are brought in from France. A champagne ginger-carrot soup is good and a baked banana with creme anglaise and yuzu icecream a fine end to the meal, but the sole with a shrimp spread in a yellow wine sauce could be both a little warmer and more generously sauced. Nevertheless a night at Le Blanc is a thoroughly Hong Kong experience, and after three years struggling to establish its reputation the restaurant is now deservedly popular.
Those wanting classic French food will find it in Central at Liberty Private Works, a third-floor space a stiff climb from an entrance between two boutiques. There's seating for about 15 at an L-shaped counter around the cooking area. This began as a test kitchen for a new bistro, where the chef tried recipes on friends until the bistro's opening. But the tiny space proved so popular there were calls for its revival, and in April newly returned Hong Kong-born Canadian Vicky Cheng re-opened it.
"I told them we can serve the same food at the bistro with candlelight, tablecloths and proper service, but they still like to come here. I think it's the interactive experience."
Cheng believes it is classic techniques rather than imported ingredients that make meals French, and although he has little choice but to fly in white truffles, he believes in applying what he learned at Toronto's Auberge du Pommier to the best of local ingredients, and he enjoys explaining to diners the dishes they've just seen assembled in front of them.
"This is egg yolk raviolo; spinach, ricotta, and white truffle; parmesan foam and Osietra caviar. Begin by breaking the yolk so that it becomes part of the sauce." There's an explosion of colour as the yellow egg flows into the caviar, and with each mouthful the background tang of truffle. A mini baguette is provided for wiping up every last delicious drop of what is just one of eight small but intense courses.
The private kitchen idea has now become so popular in Hong Kong that the label has been employed to revive forms of dining that predated it, including Shun Kee Typhoon Shelter Seafood, where dinner is taken aboard a traditional wooden sampan. The trip begins at a small pier near the Excelsior Hotel, where jolly, barefoot Madam Hing helps guests aboard her narrow, battered, tire-hung craft, and then propels it off through a bobbing shanty town of boats using an oar projecting from the stern.
Almost the entire deck is taken up with a table for up to eight, and its a puzzle as to where the cooking is going to take place, until after a short journey the sampan nuzzles nose-on to a well-lit rectangular raft fitted with stainless steel equipment, ablaze with woks on gas flames, all attended by busy chefs.
Madam Hing moves to the prow to receive dishes and bring them to the table. Giant meaty whelks must be pried from their pretty spiral shells using wooden skewers. Clams "typhoon shelter style" are warm in a black bean sauce with a hint of chili, but the climax of the meal, as the towers light up on both sides of the harbour and other boats nudge alongside, is a small mountain of the freshest possible crab cooked with chili, black beans, garlic and spring onions.
"You have to earn your reputation," says Master Ng. "You have to give up your normal job. Some private kitchens nobody goes."
But to others, everybody wants to go. And so should you.
IF YOU GO TO HONG KONG
INFORMATION
-- For details on travel to Hong Kong, seediscoverhongkong.com.
-- For reviews of private kitchens, see magazines such as Time Out Hong Kong or HK Magazine. Book before you leave home either by telephone or over the web. Wine lists are limited but most places allow you to bring your own bottle with no corkage fee. Tax on wine was recently removed in Hong Kong, and there are many wine shops selling imports at fair prices. Book before you leave home either by telephone or over the web.
-- It takes some effort to get to Red Kitchen so seats are not too hard to obtain. Take the MTR (subway) to Kam Tin station, and then a taxi. The address is Red Brick House, Kam Sheung Rd., Yuen Long, but take the phone number, 3060 9388, so the driver can call for directions. Bookings are also accepted by e-mail at redkitchen@live.hk, but keep the English simple. Master Ng consults on allergies before cooking. Menus start from HK $200 ($25) per person.
-- Le Blanc cuisine française is at 6/F, 83 Wanchai Rd. Telephone 3428 5824 for bookings, and see blanc.com.hk. There's a minimum charge of HK $290 ($36) per person, and a generous meal for two will be about HK $1000 ($125). Try Sundays and public holidays to increase your chances of obtaining a table.
-- Liberty Private Works accepts bookings one month ahead at libertypw.com. The address is 3/F, 12 Wellington St., Central. Call 5186 3282. Availability is better on weekdays for the single 8 p.m. sitting. Dinner is HK$ 700 per person for eight courses plus amuse bouche and including two desserts.
-- No English is spoken at Shun Kee, so enlist the assistance of your hotel to call 8112 0075, and to gain detailed directions to the pier in the typhoon shelter on Gloucester Rd. The earliest pick-up is 6.30 p.m. There are set menus for two, four, six and eight persons, beginning at HK $1080 ($134) for two but dropping per head as numbers increase. One cold soft drink, water, or beer is included.
