Mono… my absolute favourite meal in Hong Kong, and one that touched my soul!

 

Mono was my favourite meal in Hong Kong. Not because Mono had better food than the other meals I ate. The restaurants I visited were almost all exceptional and memorable. The perfection of Chairman, the pathbreaking vision of Wing and Vea, the clean, technical food at Ando. I loved all these restaurants and won’t forget them. It’s impossible for me to pick a favourite. 

Medai fish crudo: Peruvian causa/ Nopal tartare / Colombian cubio / kalamanta olive / leche de Tigre / Oca

But something about Mono touched my heart. 

I eat at a lot of fine dining restaurants. A quarter of the world’s top 100. The same with Asia. For a boy growing up in a small hill town in a middle class family, this life and these experiences have been unimaginable. 

But as I’ve written before, I find that as I grow older, I am drawn to the emotion of food rather than the flavour or the brilliance. 

White sesame sourdough bread. Masa madre 1888 / olive oil Aguilera, 100% biodynamic Arbequina

The food itself at Mono is brilliant. Like Ando, it has the clean flavours and technique forward approach that is probably my favourite style of restaurant cooking. 

Chef Ricardo Chaneton takes the rich heritage of South American food and looks at it through a global lens. A corn tortilla but a liver consommé. Pigeon but with the pigeon leg wrapped in rice flour. Tartare but with nopal. Langoustine but with Equadorian cacao. Food that takes South American cuisine but plays with it, pairs it in ways that are creative and inspired, and elevates in ways very few chefs can dream of.

Imperial langoustine / Equador cocoa expressions 

That would have made the meal special and memorable by itself, enough for me to rave about it and recommend it. But what made it unforgettable for me was the emotion. 

Chef Ricardo is a person who wears his heart on his sleeve. Pure passion and love. And it shows in every dish. This isn’t food that he cooks. It’s a love letter to South America and especially Venezuela. It is a man far from home who misses the sights and smells, the sound and people, the language and friends of home. A man who has decided to take all of those senses and memories and turn them into food.

Pigeon: Celtuce and kombu Mille fuille / Brazil nut Venezuelan arepa / pigeon leg merguez / Wasakaka

This passion for South America is expressed with much tenderness and thoughtfulness. He takes humble ingredients like maize and mate and banana flower and, despite presenting it with other more luxurious ingredients, he never loses sight of the humble roots, the common person’s honesty that gave birth to them. It is luxury, Michelin food. But it has a soulfulness to it, a truth, a humility that takes it beyond food and makes it a custodian of culture and history and tradition.

homemade x.o. Corn tortilla / liver consommé / Venezuelan sofrito

His final dish was a little Venezuelan tamale called a bolito, a boiled cornflour snack served with peanut butter and a sauce made from Costa Rican Soursop fruit. As I ate it, I was transported to the homes of the ordinary men and women who make up this great continent. The women toiling in the fields. The men working on construction sites. The children in little village schools. And I imagined them eating this basic, nourishing food, defined by its affordability to the poor. And I thought of this food transported across the oceans to one of Asia’s great restaurants, and all the fancy guests and fancy expectations, and this brilliant passionate chef and his determination to hold on to his memory of home and share it with the respect and reverence it deserves… and my eyes teared up.

Venezuelan bolito / peanut butter / Costa Rican soursop sauce  

It is a moment like this that makes my life in food so special. I got up from my table and gave Ricardo a hug. And I can only end by sharing with you what I said to him.

“Thank you hermano. For sharing your life, for sharing your soul. I am overwhelmed with gratitude.”

We ate:

• Mexican infladita: Corn / Bafun uni / Tonburi
• Tarboureich Oyster: Venezuelan cocuy / banana flower salad / banana consommé 
• Medai fish crudo: Peruvian causa/ Nopal tartare / Colombian cubio / Kalamanta olive / leche de Tigre / Oca
• White sesame sourdough bread. Masa madre 1888 / olive oil Aguilera, 100% biodynamic Arbequina
• Imperial langoustine / Ecuador cacao expressions 
• Taco de Obulon: Homemade X.O. corn tortilla / liver consommé / Venezeluan sofrito
• “Fabien D’eneour” Plouneour-Menez pigeon: Celtuce and Kombu Mille fuille / Brazil nut Venezuelan arepa / pigeon leg merguez / Wasakaka
• Fig jam / Argentinian mate ice cream 
• Venezuelan bolito / peanut butter/ Costa Rican soursop sauce