Alexander Wong is an award-winning architect and designer of numerous luxury homes, retail spaces and cinemas in Hong Kong. He spoke to Andrew Sun. I have been lactose intolerant for years now, so I cannot have any butter, cream, cheese or milk.
I used to eat a pint of Häagen-Dazs strawberry ice cream at a time in university because I couldn’t leave an unfinished carton in our communal fridge. But I grew up having food with low salt and low sugar. My grandmother cooked for us and she ran a farm in a Toisan village in Guangdong province.
The character of the cuisine is to capture the taste of freshly picked vegetables and steamed fish. These were staples. So my preference is always to have next to no salt or even soy sauce at home.
I do indulgence when I eat out. I like Shatin 18 (4/F, Hyatt Regency Shatin, 18 Chak Cheung Street, Sha Tin, tel: 3723 7932) for their signature Peking duck. It’s the city’s best.
I take visiting friends to Dynasty (3/F, Renaissance Harbour View Hotel, 1 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, tel: 2802 8888) for Cantonese. We’ll usually have a big lunch with double-boiled soup, the best char siu in the world, dim sum, stir fried beef rice noodles, and finish off with amazing Chinese desserts like mango pudding or mango pomelo sago. They also do excellent tofu pudding.
Kaetsu (M/F, Grand Hyatt Hong Kong, 1 Harbour Road, Wan Chai, tel: 2584 7722) is my Japanese haunt. The must-try is the super moist and tasty chicken from France, plus the wagyu teppanyaki .
