High-end dim sum collaboration between Albert Adrià, ex El Bulli, and A. Wong’s Andrew Wong pushes the envelope
- ‘They have dim sum and we have tapas,’ says Albert Adrià, to which Andrew Wong says: ‘Albert is one of the first chefs I know who really understands dim sum’
- No wonder that, when they cooked together, their cross-cultural takes on dim sum classics, such as Iberico ham steamed buns, were stunning
At first glance, Cantonese and Spanish cuisines may not be natural partners. But given their shared obsession for the freshest possible seafood, an enthusiastic embrace of nose-to-tail eating and a love of communal dining, it quickly becomes clear why a dim sum collaboration between chefs Albert Adrià and Andrew Wong revealed so much about their seemingly disparate cultures.
Wong opened the eponymous London restaurant A. Wong in 2012 on the same spot near Victoria station as the Cantonese restaurant run by his parents, Alfred and Annie. It eventually became the first Chinese restaurant outside Asia to be given two Michelin stars.
Born in Britain, Wong trained in London, then studied at the famous Sichuan Culinary Institute in Chengdu, southwest China, before criss-crossing the country learning diverse culinary techniques and traditions, and soaking up and getting inspired by its vast and diverse food landscape.
The collaboration was an opportunity to show Londoners why dim sum is so much more than just dumplings in bamboo steamers.
The genesis of this unprecedented dim sum dinner – some of the creations will transfer to the permanent tasting menu at A. Wong – came from Wong’s long-held assertion that Chinese dim sum chefs demonstrate the same mastery as their counterparts working in fine European pastry.
Wong also wanted to underline how, despite its traditional methods, innovation and reinvention have always been critical in the world of dim sum.
Four-hands dinners and pop-ups are back on the menu in Hong Kong
And there are few better chefs to demonstrate this point with Wong than Adrià, a true legend in the kitchen and someone long fascinated by the intricate precision required to craft dim sum.
Back in 1985, Adrià joined the team at El Bulli restaurant with his brother, Ferran. In time it became the world’s most lauded restaurant, known for constantly testing the limits of gastronomy with increasingly creative techniques and application of science.
Together the brothers pioneered thousands of new dishes, before Albert embarked on his own culinary journey when the restaurant closed in 2011. Today he leads Enigma in Barcelona, Spain, which offers a 25-plate seasonal tasting menu and recently broke into the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.
Adrià explains that one key bridge between Cantonese and Spanish cuisine is how they are eaten, primarily based on sharing.
“The Chinese [put the food] in the middle of the table and generally the Spanish do, too – they have dim sum and we have tapas,” he says.
“Albert is one of the first chefs I know who really understands dim sum,” says Wong. “He understands that pastry isn’t just the sweet world, that pastry can be savoury.
“I’ve always been a big believer that dim sum was never meant to be a repertoire of 50 things. It was always meant to be ‘the sky’s the limit’.”
He refers to the origins of dim sum in Guangdong province, where the best chefs in the region would “set the standard and invent” creative bites to woo foreigners coming to trade in south China in the 1800s.
The two decided to pool their talent and craft a menu together. Adrià says two of his chefs started out by spending three days in Wong’s kitchen.
“We wanted to see Andrew’s philosophy and way of managing a service, then we had several meetings to plan the joint menu. We brought five sauces with us, including oyster, chicken, shrimp and turnip, that Andrew was responsible for modifying in a Chinese style.”
The resulting dishes were exceptional, including a stunning take on cheung fun that was inspired by Enigma.
“I’m Chinese and stuck in my ways, so what can you put in cheung fun?” says Wong. “Prawns, char siu, maybe mushroom?”
“At Enigma, they don’t use wheat or chestnut starch to make the cheung fun skin – they use a squid stock and a gelling agent. Then they fill it with chopped up parsley, toasted almonds, parsley oil and salt. I was like – damn! Why didn’t I think of that?”
To riff on this dish at the four-hands dinner, Wong channelled his parents’ dish of chicken with cashew nuts.
He filled the cheung fun with cashews in a coriander pesto, topped it with an umami bomb of squid sauce and tamarind-paste caramel and served it with thin slices of youtiao, or deep-fried dough sticks.
“For those of you who like dim sum super traditional, this will give you a heart attack,” says Wong. “But it’s truly delicious and embraces everything I see as important about the essence of dim sum.”
Also on the menu was xiao long bao with a sublime broth made from the finest Iberico ham and a truly decadent play on prawn toast crafted from crispy pork belly with honey, mustard and black truffle.
An A. Wong classic, “Memories of Peking duck”, brought black truffle from Western Australia and a spoon of Sevruga caviar for the ultimate upgrade atop a classic duck pancake.
There was the beloved Spanish gambas al ajillo, or garlic shrimp, served with a soft and fluffy bao to soak up the aromatic sauce, as well as the Adrià hallmark of Gordal “olives” – created through spherification, a technique pioneered at El Bulli – served in an oil infused with star anise and goji berry.
The dish of Barcelona “saliva” chicken with cockscomb stew perhaps best exemplified the seamless synthesis of culinary cultures.
“When I tasted Enigma’s chicken stock, the first thing I thought of was saliva chicken,” says Wong. “So, for our menu, it was about getting those aromatics that we’d normally put into saliva chicken and giving them a new dimension, with Sichuan pepper, broad bean paste and chilli. It gives the dish a different and distinct cultural reference.”
He stresses that these cultural references are far from new and have, in fact, been crafted over the centuries, emphasising how the Chinese diaspora has “long embraced local people, local talent and even local ingredients, before expressing their own culture through that lens”.
“It’s designed to be pushing boundaries, about a juxtaposition between us, about celebrating culture through time, and the fact that culture migrates and evolves. It’s our job to try to embrace it – and evolve with it.”
