216 hong kong tatler. september 2017
LIFE | FOOD
PHOTOGRAPHY: MOSES NGUWE OPOCENSKY, BEEF & LIBERTY
THE INSPIRATION: Beef brisket soup noodles
THE DISH: Beef brisket burger with Asian slaw and fried noodles
From running the Mandarin Oriental’s fi ne-dining operations to brainstorming
creative fast food for Beef & Liberty, Uwe has experienced it all over his 13
years in Hong Kong. For his dish, he thought back to one of his fi rst treasured
memories in the city—sitting down to a bowl of beef brisket noodles at Kau Kee
in Central, where he always opts for the plain, unadulterated broth as opposed
to the curry-spiked version. “It’s so Hong Kong. What could be better than
noodles with meat?” For his Kau Kee-inspired burger, he slow-cooks brisket
for 48 hours and tops it with his secret recipe “Kraft” cheese for the requisite
melt. He then layers it with a slaw of cabbage, watercress, radishes and parsley
tinged with XO sauce, and fi nishes it off with a tangle of fried pasta strands to
include a noodle element in the burger. This playful dish is testament to Uwe’s
understanding of the shifting tides in Hong Kong’s dining scene. “When I arrived
in 2004, everything was a lot more conservative, with fi ne dining in hotels and
not enough funky and independent alternatives,” he says. “Now, you see the
dining scene shifting.” So he’s launching his own eponymous restaurant later this
month, an intimate venue in Central serving a menu of seasonally driven food for
16 people each night. “The idea is that people come to my home, and I cook the
best food I possibly can.”