BACK IN ACTION
Apologies, it’s been a while since my last mailing. Some of you may be relieved about that, but hopefully not too many of you. It’s been a pretty wild time these last 15 or so months. I’ve been out of Hong Kong traveling for almost a third of 2022. So here’s what’s been happening, to explain the lack of comms.
Some of you know, and this explains the waistline, that my background is food. As a Chef in my younger days, I did my time as a Chef de Partie and in many ways those horribly badly paid stages and the lengthy hours served perhaps as a more important training than any corporate PowerPoint course I did in glitzy hotels in London.
Being able to navigate confidently around a kitchen and work with likeminded, passionate people under pressure is the big take out from all those sweaty sweary services and has served me well ever since. You can’t get that credibility from a snazzy textbook.
So back in Summer 2021 I took on a short three-month project for a certain sandwich brand from London, here in Hong Kong. If you’d have told me then that I would end up spending nine weeks in the midst of the pandemic, broiling in the desert heat (it hit 54°C) only to be quickly blast chilled back into life by Kuwait’s ferocious air conditioning, I might have looked a little stunned. But that’s where I’ve been and then fifteen months later, I’ve been able to hang up my apron and return to Sake.
Kuwaitis it seems are pretty passionate about sandwiches. They like ‘em toasted, and the more melted cheese the better, consumed with lashings of syrup-charged lattes. The city is massively into their food. Instagram is littered with terabytes of reels, stories and posts and as evenings turn into mornings, malls and food outlets are buoyant with locals.
Simple garnish but why distract from the fish?
Trouble is, as a Westerner, this great food scene is missing the right libations. Of course this is a religious thing, and I’m not here to pass judgement on that. It goes with the territory. However all those wonderfully grilled fish from the Persian Gulf are crying out for a crisp white wine, and those smoky slow cooked lamb dishes would be great with some pinot noir.
Japanese food is popular and I was lucky to get into ROKA, recently opened as it was at the Waldorf Astoria in Kuwait City, churning out top notch robatayaki cuisine but not a tokkuri in sight of course. But it was full, thankfully. We all know that making money without a Sake, wine or cocktail revenue stream is an achievement in itself, however much you charge for the food. Decent mocktails though (geez, did I just type that?).
So what’s the point of this ramble? It’s my explainer into the radio silence I guess.
So I’m back to the Sake, hurrah! January 2023 finally sees me returning to Japan, almost three years since I fled the place in a mad scramble, prematurely as it panned out, to beat the closing borders and dwindling freedoms in Hong Kong. So more from me to come.
Much has changed over the pandemic years. The Sake world was very much an offline, off the grid industry. Nowadays I sadly don’t have the time or bandwidth to keep up with all the blogs, podcasts and proud Tojis welcoming the world into their historic domains. The choice of online platforms to buy Sake in Hong Kong has exploded although I’ll stick with my pre-pandemic partners, thanks very much.
But even with all this technological advancement, nothing beats being in Japan. Can’t wait to be back in action.
FOOTNOTE:
As an aside, I’d love a US$0.33 falafel sandwich right now from Sharaf (مطعم شرف). The 100 fils price tag was set by Kuwait’s late Amir Sheikh Jaber Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah about 40 years ago to provide an important source of food for the lowest earners in Kuwait. A popular decision, take note the West. Now I’d vote for that.
