*HONG KONG: A pair of his father’s old tandoor ovens helped Hong Kongrestaurateur Asim Hussain achieve a dream — the world’s first Michelin starfor a Pakistani restaurant, an accolade he hopes will fire interest in thecountry’s often overlooked cuisine.*
Like many of Hong Kong’s 85,000 strong South Asian population, Hussain’sfamily trace their lineage in the bustling financial hub back generations,when the city was a British colonial outpost.
His great-grandfather arrived during World War One, overseeing mess hallsfor British soldiers while his Cantonese speaking father owned restaurantsin the eighties and nineties.
Hussain, 33, already had some twenty eateries in his group when he decidedto embark on his what he described as his most personal and risky projectyet, a restaurant serving dishes from Punjab region, the family’s ancestralhomeland and where he was packed off to boarding school aged six.
His father, a serial entrepreneur and even once Pakistan’s ambassador toSouth Korea, suggested he restore two old tandoors from his now shutteredrestaurant collecting dust in storage.
“He comes from a generation that doesn’t throw things away,” laughsHussain, dressed in a traditional knee-length tunic and sitting in arestaurant decked with paintings by Pakistani artists. “Actually theresults are better than if we had new ovens because these things improvewith age.”
Those tandoors, frequent trips to Lahore to perfect recipes and a kitchenoverseen by head chef Palash Mitra, earned the New Punjab Club a Michelinstar just 18 months after it opened its doors.
– ‘A benchmark’ –
The success made headlines in Pakistan, a country that is unlikely to see aMichelin guide any time soon and whose chefs have long felt overshadowed bythe wider global recognition gained from neighbouring India’s regionalcuisines.
“It makes us proud, it makes us very happy,” Waqar Chattha, who runs one ofIslamabad’s best-known restaurants, told AFP. “In the restaurant fraternityit’s a great achievement. It sort of sets a benchmark for others to achieveas well.”
Hussain is keen to note that his restaurant only represents one ofPakistan’s many cuisines, the often meat-heavy, piquant food of the Punjab.At it doesn’t come cheap — as much as $100 per head.
“I’m not arrogant or ignorant to say this is the best Pakistani restaurantin the world. There are better Pakistani restaurants than this in Pakistan.”
But he says the accolade has still been a “great source of pride” for HongKong’s 18,000-strong Pakistani community.
“It’s bringing a very niche personal story back to life, this culture, thiscuisine is sort of unknown outside of Pakistan, outside of Punjab, so in avery small way I think we’ve shed a positive light on the work, on who weare and where we come from,” he explains.
It was the second star achieved by Black Sheep, the restaurant group whichwas founded six years ago by Hussain and his business partner, veteranCanadian chef Christopher Mark, and has seen rapid success.
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But the expansion of Michelin and other western food guides into Asia hasnot been without controversy.
Critics have often said reviewers tended to over-emphasise western culinarystandards, service and tastes.
Daisann McLane is one of those detractors. She describes the Michelinguide’s arrival in Bangkok last year as “completely changing the culinaryscene there — and not in a good way.”
She runs culinary tours to some of the Hong Kong’s less glitzy eateries —to hole in the wall “dai pai dong” food stalls, African and South Asiancanteens hidden inside the famously labyrinthine Chungking Mansions and to“cha chan teng” tea shops famous for their sweet brews and thick slabs oftoast.
While she’s “delighted” New Punjab Club has been recognised, she has herreservations: “There is a lot of world cuisine operating way under theradar in Hong Kong and it doesn’t get noticed by Michelin or the big awardgroups.”
– ‘Taking ownership’ –
For some, any recognition of Pakistan’s overlooked cuisine is a successstory.
Sumayya Usmani said she spent years trying to showcase the distinctflavours of Pakistani cuisine, so heavily influenced by the tumultuous andviolent migration sparked by the 1947 partition of India.
When the British-Pakistani chef first pitched her cookbook to publishers onher country’s cuisine, many initially balked.
But in recent years, she says, attitudes have changed. Pakistani-runrestaurants in the west that once might have described themselves as Indianare more proudly proclaiming their real culinary heritage, she says.
“I think it’s really good that people are coming out of that fear ofcalling themselves specifically Pakistani,” she told AFP. “It’s nice thatPakistanis have started to take ownership of what belongs to them.”
Back in Hong Kong, Hussain remarks the hard work has only just begun.
“I joke with the boys and I say that ‘It’s the first Pakistani Punjabirestaurant in the world to win a star, let’s not be the first one to lose astar’”. – APP/AFP
