PeakDash

Why did you decide to be a chef? “It’s simple. When I was 15, my father told me to go out and get a job. I started at a restaurant in suburban Maryland, as a busboy, but in the US you need a minor’s permit to work if you’re under 16. I couldn’t work past 6pm, but they liked having me there and put me in the kitchen.

“At first it was just an escape from school, but I quickly got attached to the lifestyle. As I got more involved, I realised I had a passion for it and I’ve been doing it ever since. I went to the CIA [Culinary Institute of America] after I’d been working for three years – I had just turned 18.”

You have worked at a lot of great restaurants. Which chef has had the most influence on your career? “There were several. My first fine-dining kitchen was at Seasons, at the Four Seasons in Chicago, with a chef named Robert Sulatycky, who kind of became my first mentor. He was Canadian and the Canadian culinary scene in the late 1990s and early 2000s was heavily emulating what was happening in England, so there was a decidedly French conservative bent as opposed to the culinary zeitgeist of the moment, which was Spanish and molecular.

“I got pushed into French [cuisine] pretty early and stayed on that path. [Joël] Robuchon [at Restaurant Joël Robuchon, in Las Vegas] was a tremendous influence; my stage at Le Meurice [in Paris] when Yannick Alléno was chef, and my time at The Fat Duck [Heston Blumenthal’s restaurant, in England] were pretty important.”

You won a third star for Coi, in San Francisco, but then left to lead Team USA in the Bocuse d’Or, in 2019. Why did you want to take part in that competition? “It was always something in the back of my mind, working for Robert Sulatycky. He competed for Team Canada in 1999, and up until Matthew Peters won gold, two years before I took part, Robert was the highest placing North American ever. He was always involved in the competition. I had travelled with him to Lyon in 2007 and I saw the event – he was a judge that year.

“So it had been in the back of my mind for the better part of a decade. They were looking for candidates following Matt’s win in 2017, and asked me if I would be interested in putting my hat in the ring. At the time, I was in my early 30s, I had a two-year-old daughter [with wife, Lauren, general manager of Belon], and we had aspirations to make our family bigger. I thought, ‘If I don’t do this now, I’m never going to do it.’

“With a heavy heart, I left Coi once I’d won the national competition – you need to win the spot to lead Team USA. I found out about four days before I left for Las Vegas [for the nationals] that we had won the third star. I’m incredibly grateful to have gotten the third star, but even if I had known we were getting it, I probably would have done the competition anyway.

“We spent 16 months preparing for the competition – I was doing it full time. The Bocuse d’Or is very different from working in a restaurant. Every day in a restaurant, there’s payoff – I get to serve guests, I get feedback. At the Bocuse d’Or you don’t get the day-to-day feedback, so it’s a relief to get to the day [of the competition] and execute.”

What place did you come in? “Ninth, out of 24 teams. It was a tricky year – we were following up gold. It was challenging but we’re proud of the work we did.”

What brought you to Hong Kong? “I came to work at Amber. A friend connected me with Richard [Ekkebus, Amber’s culinary director]. We flew over here and fell in love with Hong Kong. We moved here in May 2019, about a week after they’d launched the new Amber.”

What direction are you taking with the new Belon? “This is the first time I am in a clearly demarcated French restaurant. L2O [in Chicago] was a fine-dining modern seafood restaurant, Coi was a very Californian but general fine-dining place that I ended up turning into a seafood restaurant. Belon is decidedly French and that is where my heart is – I absolutely adore French cuisine.

“There’s a dizzying array of products that you can find in Hong Kong, and that’s been a blessing and a curse. In the US you can’t use anything except domestic fruits and vegetables and meat – there, I was not able to buy lardo from Italy or incredible Japanese ingredients. It’s almost paralysing at first, the amount of resources you have here. But while we’re always looking for the best individual ingredients, we’re going to stay decidedly French in our approach and technique.

“It’s funny that we still call it Belon, even though it’s a brand new space and a brand new chef. I think [the guys at Black Sheep] realised they had something very special there in the old space, and we agree that we want it to be a continuation of what was already started, not a blank slate. So the roast chicken remains, the bread, the mille-feuille. We didn’t want to just erase the past, even though we are in a nicer atmosphere with a larger kitchen and dining room.”

At least three times in your career – at L2O by Laurent Gras, at Coi, and now at Belon – you’ve taken over from established chefs. Is it difficult to step into other shoes? “This seems to be my speciality. I ended up back at L2O [where Kirkley had worked before] because I was chef at a restaurant called Ria, in Chicago, and the hotel it was in was collapsing financially. I went back as chef-partner. Michelin docked us down to one star [from three] three weeks after I took over the executive chef position, and we got a second one back in our second year.

“Then a friend of a friend knew Daniel Patterson at Coi. Daniel wanted to spend more time on his other businesses, and didn’t want to call himself the chef of Coi if he wasn’t there on a day-to-day basis. He said, ‘Do what you want to do, just make sure the food is spectacular and you’re not driving the restaurant into financial ruin.’

“Now, we’re happy to be with Black Sheep [restaurant group] – they treat us right and have built us a spectacular environment to work in. We hope we’re here for a long time.

“With Belon, they [originally] wanted a straight­forward neo-Parisian bistro – oysters and great, simple food. With Daniel Calvert, it ballooned into something greater. The food got more refined, more detailed. It got to the point where the food and service outmatched the actual room.

“We will continue to elevate it. I think we’ve definitely outstripped the word ‘bistro’ at this point – it’s definitely a restaurant, and we have greater aspirations than what was possible in the old space. We’re growing the wine programme, and we’ll continue to evolve and see where it takes us. We’ll see how people respond to the new stuff, but we’ll continue to push the envelope.”

The new Belon is scheduled to open to the public on March 25.

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