Helming the kitchens of two new Hong Kong eateries – Odea and The Steak Room – chef Calvin Choi taps into his years at some of the city’s best restaurants and his tenure as executive sous chef at the InterContinental Hong Kong. He speaks with Nick Walton on the new concepts, changing palates, and preserving the nostalgia of one of the city’s top steakhouses.
At FWD House 1881 you’re overseeing two different culinary concepts – a French bistro and a steakhouse. How do you ensure these two restaurants maintain their unique identities?
While establishing two new brands and overseeing both culinary concepts is no easy feat, it actually serves as an advantage because it allows us to differentiate the two right from the start. Odea is an all-day dining restaurant, serving lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, and tasting menus, and when we were creating the menu for Odea we deliberately avoided the use of too many sauces, which are common in French cuisine. It’s all about healthy eating, clean eating, good eating, so at Odea, we want to serve dishes that really focus on the flavor and the freshness of ingredients, and smaller portions so that even at the end of the tasting menu, our guests will feel just right.
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As for The Steak Room, it’s a similar approach; we are serving very high-quality beef such as the Australian Mayura Wagyu, USDA bone-in rib eye, and USDA prime rib eye, and we want customers to taste the original flavor of the meat, so we don’t use a lot of additional flavoring except quality sea salt.
Tell us about the concept behind ODEA; its cuisine is described as both “modern French” and ‘family-style’, two ideas that don’t usually mesh well.
I guess it depends on what your definition of ‘modern French’ and ‘family-style’ is. I think the definitions have merged slightly because, as we all know, the trend is now more towards healthier, cleaner eating and we want to break the stereotype that French cuisine must be heavy and buttery, and must be a three-hour-plus fine dining meal. Our concept is modern French because Odea has such a comprehensive menu, ranging from sumptuous appetizers like caviar, red prawn carpaccio, and escargot, through to popular mains such as Dover sole, and roasted baby chicken.
At the same time, our portions are meant to be shared, be it between two friends, a family of four, or a dinner party of 6 – 8. You will find that our dishes are light, without too much sauce, and focus more on the natural taste of the ingredients, so that it wont be too heavy at the end of the meal, even if guests order half the menu.
While it’s a French restaurant, we also notice elements of Chinese and Italian cuisine in the menus; why did you take this approach?
Hong Kong is a world-famous culinary city as a result of its diversity and sophistication. Many chefs and cuisines, not just in Hong Kong but globally I am sure, place a priority on the freshness of ingredients and the balance of flavors. As such, while we were preparing Odea’s tasting menu, we prepared a few versions of the foie gras using different cooking methods, and the consensus was that the use of Chinese yellow wine to poach the foie gras was best. You won’t find this dish on the a la carte menu because tasting menus are meant to offer a more unique experience.
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Tell us about the tasting menu; what were you trying to achieve through your dish selections and which dishes on this menu best illustrate your own culinary style?
Our guests do love to order our tasting menu because it offers diners the chance to taste a smaller portion of our signature dishes and see how specific ingredients in the dishes complement each other.
Our ‘modern french’ concept focuses on less use of sauces and butter, focusing on the natural flavour of ingredients likes semi dried tomatoes, basil and dill, lemon zest and spices. As we serve each dish, customers will experience how the flavors complement each other, and how it escalates in texture and complexity. To give you an example, our beef carpaccio uses fresh horseradish as garnish, which is freshly shaven in front of the customers according to their preference. We don’t even need much flavouring except salt and pepper and horseradish. It sounds cliché, but really, “less is more”.
Do you look at your new role at FWD House 1881 as a chance to showcase your own culinary skills?
The name of our restaurant, Odea, actually means, a theater for musical or dramatic performances, and in this case, it is a theater for culinary performance. The entire team plays a part in putting together a performance for our customers, from the moment they step foot through the entrance, to when they leave our “Odea”.
What this new role offers me is actually a chance to step back, refresh, and re-start. As I had been in my previous role for many years, it would have been easy to just keep working and keep cooking but I decided it was time to leave my comfort zone. It’s exciting and challenging and I’ve been wearing my thinking cap night and day and I love it.
There are other challenges. It’s two new concepts that need to be created from scratch, not just one menu but, in the case of Odea, afternoon tea, tasting menu, and lunch set, all of which need to be different to bring customers back again and again. It’s also a new norm; Covid-19 has affected many aspects of life and as tourists can’t travel to Hong Kong our main customers will be local spenders. Hongkongers are very sophisticated gourmands, and with so many wonderful restaurants in the city, we need to work hard to create a dining experience and menus that will definitely draw them back to us.
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What’s the one dish at Odea that we can’t miss?
If you ask a chef, he is going to say that’s every dish because every dish is created with heart but if I have to pick one, I’d say our roasted baby chicken with Ras el Hanout has never failed to impress.
Your other concept, which opens this month, is The Steak Room, which will reunite the entire culinary team of The Steak House at the InterContinental Hong Kong, which you oversaw. Will loyal dinners of the Steak House see similarities at the new venue?
Definitely you will see some similarities because we wanted to keep the best of the best from the Intercon Steak House. The Intercom Steak House was very iconic and loved by many customers, not just from Hong Kong, but from other countries too. We want to extend that legacy by injecting new characteristics and dishes so that we can create new memories for our guests, whether they’re former guests of the Intercon Steak House, or new guests to The Steak Room.
Most importantly, the atmosphere is very different; dining at a steak house in a five- star hotel setting is very different than a steak room set in a nostalgic, heritage building that has so much history. You have to sit there to dine and experience yourself.
How will you make The Steak Room stand out in a city with some great steakhouses?
Every steak house will serve wonderful meats from top meat producers, but what makes a restaurant stand out is the chef’s experience – in my case nearly two decades – in seasoning, cooking, and grilling. Our seasoning is homemade and created especially for The Steak Room, so our flavours are different from other steakhouses.
The Steak Room will be serving Mayura Wagyu from South Australia – what does this beef offer lovers of a great steak?
Some people like Australian Wagyu due to its marbling and fattiness and some people prefer more of a beef flavor and less of the marbling. The wonderful thing about the Mayura Wagyu (which was also served at the Steak House) is that it offers the best of both – it has great marble and fat but it also has a strong beef flavor. Mayura cattle are grain-fed but on average, each cow eats approximately 1-2kg of partially broken milk chocolates supplied by Cadbury’s every day, along with a mix of gummy bears, strawberries, and cream-flavored gummy snakes. This obviously leads to a distinctive flavour profile.
What other signature dishes should we look out for?
Besides the Mayura Wagyu, our Welsh lamb rack and Spanish Iberico pork rack are also to die for.
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You’ve worked under some master chefs, including Alain Ducasse and Laurent André; what’re some of the wisdom you learned from these leading chefs that you’ll pass on to your teams at FWD House 1881?
From Alain Ducasse I really saw what a true leader is like, the qualities he possesses that makes him a true master not just in culinary excellence but also in terms of management style. As for Laurent, I thought I knew how to cook because I had gained quite a few years of experience but it was Laurent who opened up my eyes and expanded my horizon in regards to what true western cuisine is like. Even though I still have so much to learn, I owe these two mentors everything I have achieved so far.
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