Before studying recipes at his parents’ Chinese takeaways to now cooking for Hong Kong’s rich and famous, Silas Li isn’t stopping his revolution of Cantonese dining
As a teenager, Silas Li would frequent the kitchens of his parents’ Chinese takeaway joints in the UK, patiently studying techniques to the dishes feeding his community.
Silas declared his life destined for cooking in kitchens from a young age, his sights set on being anointed with the title of chef. Inside the takeaway kitchens in Molesey, London, and Portsmouth, he began to play with knives, cutting vegetables and preparing for the dinner rush.
“I had so many questions about how [our cooking] was made,” Silas recalls in his office. The Hong Kong-style cooking of Chinese takeaways in the UK, suited for the lesser-travelled British palate, enchanted Silas. “There wasn’t a special dish that really attracted me to the industry. I was just supposed to be a chef.”
Yet Silas was not made to join his parents’ kitchens, opposing a trend of a string of his British-born Chinese friends assisting the family takeaway business. He instead joined culinary school to study a scholarly path of refined dining. A self-obsessed fried-rice eater, Silas brought his weaponry of Cantonese recipes to school, confronted with a classical regime of French cooking.
“We began to learn how to cut brunoise, julienne, and slice according to the French style. I brought my chopper out and people were shocked!” The chopper, a staple in any Cantonese kitchen, speaks to the versatility of both Silas’ cooking and Cantonese cuisine, a fact pertinent to today’s story of the chef.
Much to his father’s dismay of whether an independent chef career would turn him a profit, Silas soldiered on in culinary school, benefitting from a comprehensive education of French cuisine, the foundation of fine-dining cooking.
Silas entered the Salon Coulignet International during culinary school, became involved with the British team at MasterChef, and worked with famed British chef Renée Blackman.
After stints as sous-chef and head chef at kitchens in the UK, he travelled to Hong Kong in 1997 to work as commis chef in a hotel restaurant, a departure from his former kitchen seniority.
Next came an exclusive position at Sai Kung’s remote dining kitchen one-thirtyone. Stationed inside a village house in the verdant Three Fathoms Cove, modern European cuisine is served for lunch and dinner, with ample sourcing of local produce.
As executive chef, Silas led the restaurant to present an endearing banquet experience, where many of Hong Kong’s top celebrities and businessman brass dined. He matured a brand name for his work at one-thirtyone, attracting a crowd of Hong Kongers willing to travel a distance to enjoy his cooking.
However, a tipping point came when backbreaking work at the restaurant, a detriment to his physical health, left Silas looking for an exit. From brushing the floors clean daily to ensuring that all work, from prep to presentation, was monitored by him, Silas sought refuge from his 16-hour-long shifts in an opportunity offered by a returning customer, a local luxury retail magnate. He soon began working as a private chef for the businessman.
Now catering to a smaller audience, Silas flexed his creativity in the kitchen to master recipes employing the finest of ingredients. “The job wasn’t easy,” he admits. “I had to ensure I had the wow factor to create different dishes and something special for every meal.” Silas was detailed and precise on what he was providing to his client.
Silas led a two-decade chapter serving his client daily, whilst balancing his time studying new recipes and consulting for restaurants in Hong Kong. He was afforded great creative freedom and latitude for research of his ancestral food culture, befitting the next story of his chef life.
In a pitch to serve the next generation of chefs with the knowledge provided to him in cooking Chinese cuisine – its techniques, history, and skills – Silas took charge of Hong Kong Cuisine 1983 in Happy Valley in 2021, joining his good friend and owner Baldwin Cheng.
Baldwin was eager to shun a former image of the cuisine enshrining traditional Cantonese recipes in secrecy and preventing new talent from joining the ranks. He enabled Silas to craft a new menu that paid respect to Hong Kong’s core banquet dishes and elevated on the classics.
The menu at Hong Kong Cuisine 1983 focuses on “70 percent traditional and 30 percent a twist on [Cantonese cooking]”. Elements of the new culinary direction harbour a respect for authentic Chinese cooking techniques and recipes, whilst innovating on flavour combinations with Western elements.
Dishes like the braised abalone, stir-fried lobster with hairy crab, and roasted duck with water chestnut represent a traditional facet of local dining at Hong Kong Cuisine 1983, whilst new favourites such as the sweet-and-sour Ibérico pork, grilled poached foie gras with Chinese marinade, and stuffed chicken with goose web illustrate a Western flair that complements the classic Chinese cooking techniques.
“Precise” is the correct word to describe Silas’ cooking, indicative of an attention to minute detail that marks his restaurant distinct from other Chinese establishments. Notable in this obsession to craft dishes into art pieces is the crispy chicken.
The laborious process of crafting the crispy chicken involves a task of repetition, dousing the bird in spoonfuls of boiling oil to crisp up the skin whilst leaving the meat moist with slightly salty, moist juices. The elegant dish retains its crisp texture for up to an hour after being served, emblematic of Hong Kong Cuisine 1983’s meticulousness.
It is the florid presentation, ornate decorations of both the dishes and the restaurant’s interior, and Silas’ pure devotion to perfection that has rendered Hong Kong Cuisine 1983 a prime community hang-out for the rich and famous.
“We have a regular customer base that returns for consistency and standard. We change our menus quite frequently, yet also have a lot of off-menu items. When guests call in and ask can you create something special, we are able to deliver, whether they want something more French, more creative, more vegetarian.”
Silas concedes that “Chinese food may not seem sexy and Chinese chefs don’t like to share secrets with you,” but his mission is to change perceptions and standards. “We know that Western chefs are treated like rock stars, yet Chinese chefs are just Chinese chefs.” Beyond the menu, Silas has led a team of budding chefs eager to maintain strict rigour in the kitchen and a constant mind of innovation to the twists and turns of Cantonese cuisine.
His team consists of Western-trained and local chefs from a wealth of backgrounds, which helps to mature the Western finesse of his menu. “I want to disrupt the industry,” Silas states. Trade secrets of recipes are shared amongst the community to better the standard of cooking at Hong Kong Cuisine 1983 and other restaurants.
Silas encourages his Western-trained chefs to use the kitchen platform to brainstorm new ways to merge a touch of French or British techniques with Chinese ingredients and recipes. Departing from a traditional kitchen structure, he splits the kitchen into a Chinese department and Western department in order to fuse the two thoughts of cooking on the menu.
As dim sum and traditional Chinese chefs have become dying arts in Hong Kong, Baldwin and Silas sought to hire chefs who can institute a new wave of youth in Hong Kong, preserving age-old Cantonese cuisine.
Hong Kong Cuisine 1983 is planning to begin an apprenticeship programme, partnering with local and international culinary schools to “bring in new young blood into the industry and involve fresh thinking that will benefit the industry to evolve”.
Can Chinese food truly hold up to a standard of fine-dining? Silas says yes. “Why not? It is in our consistency and maintaining our standard of cooking. Hong Kong is a little bit of everything, so we wanted to be representative of the city.”
Eager to try chef Silas Li’s elaborate Chinese cooking? Book your table at Hong Kong Cuisine 1983 by phone or online.
