Alan Lo charts the beginning of his success back to the SARS epidemic. Since then,the star of this Press Room Group’s co-founder has never stopped rising.
Text by Jason Spotts, portrait by Samantha Sin
The road from gourmand to restaurateur requires more than just a passion for food. If every epicure opened their fantasy restaurant, the streets would be filled with shattered dreams. One may have the tools, the finances and the passion without having the time or the luck.
For Alan Lo, co-founding partner behind French brasserie The Press Room, that curious stroke of luck would come later from an unlikely source. His passion, however, was no issue. He has it in spades.
“I love travelling, and food speaks so much about culture,” says Lo. “It’s very interesting when you look at the food that local people eat, and I don’t mean the tourist traps. I’m talking about everyday fare. That, together with street lives and how people interact, is fascinating.”
As a young man, Lo’s studies would take him close to New York City. For a food lover, the Big Apple is almost holy ground, an endlessly stimulating landscape.
From boarding school in Connecticut to his studies at Princeton University in New Jersey, New York was never far away. Lo would spend his weekends exploring the Five Boroughs, notebook in hand, and everything it had to offer to the intrepid foodie. It was like coming home.
“You are affected by the passion of New York food culture,” Lo explains. “That intense level of interest in food is infectious. In New York, food critics are so powerful that they make or break your business. That’s definitely something that makes it so exciting. It’s just in the blood.”
The seeds were sown but did not sprout until, of all things, SARS in 2003. Lo had just completed his degree in architecture. Fresh out of Princeton, he was staring at a barren job market.
Strangely, this would prove to be a singular stroke of luck. It gave him a path to turn a lifelong gastronomic passion into a glittering career. Lo would take his first offer as a food and beverage management trainee at Mandarin Oriental, Hyde Park in London.
“It was like a restaurant foundation course into all the details that people overlook,” Lo recalls. “A very hands-on operation. Polishing glasses, waiting tables, learning the ins and outs of hotel f&b. It was not something I intended to do, but I’m definitely glad I did.”
While design was in his heart, Lo was forced to concede that it was not in his blood. “You need that discipline,” Lo explains. “I love architecture but its practice is a completely different story. I still wanted to be close to design, but more related to hospitality. The areas of eat, drink and sleep.”
Along with his two partners in Hong Kong, ex-investment banker Arnold Wong and Paolo Pong, Managing Director of Altaya Wines, they would roll the dice in addressing what Lo considered a glaring hole in Hong Kong’s culinary scene.
“We’d been talking for years about the lack of interesting, street-level Western restaurants of quality in the mid-to-upper market,” Lo recalls. “If you want something nice and simple, a place to chat over a glass of wine, you’re left with the mediocrity of Lan Kwai Fong or Soho.
“The city is overly interested in things that are fashionable,” Lo laments. “We wanted to be the anti-thesis of that. We wanted to make something timeless.”
His roots in design would work for him after all. Beginning with a naturally inspiring space, they worked backwards to build an identity like a designer turning empty space into a personal canvas.
Their first restaurant, The Press Room, now occupies the space where the Hua Qiao Daily newspaper stood in the 1920s. Next to it is Classified, a premium cheese and wine deli. Wan Chai gastropub, The Pawn, would open in 2008 in a three-floor, heritage building where a pawn shop once resided.
Classified Mozzarella Bar would follow the same year on Wan Chai’s Star Street before SML (short for “Small, Medium, Large”) opened in Times Square in 2009.
Though almost purely Western-inspired, Lo’s restaurants have never ignored the ground on which they stand. They balance authenticity with a need to acknowledge local tastes as a responsibility to their customers. It is no easy task.
“We’ve been lucky with our restaurants,” says Lo. This business is very human-intensive, both customers and from the perspective of our operations team.
“From our colleagues’ point of view, it’s very challenging,” Lo observes. “Western food is not in their blood so we have to get them interested. That’s the only way for them to feel confident in front of customers. You need to know your food, your wine and your drink, it’s as simple as that.
“Life is so much easier in US or Europe,” Lo continues, “where your staff is eating that type of food on their off days, or they’re interested in wines. They’ll go to competitors’ restaurants when they’re not working. Here, it takes that much extra effort to educate the staff, and customers as well.
“We never came up with any concept that neglects our local clientele,” says Lo. “It’s equally important.”
This is especially salient in a city like Hong Kong where palates are so discerning. “Hong kongers are probably the most demanding in the region,” says Lo. “The local palate must be considered. You can’t just cookie-cut from a certain nationality and slap that on the table, and yet, you must present something authentic. It’s a fine balance.”
My Favourite Things with Alan Lo
What is the most beautifully presented meal you have ever had? It was at Blue Hill Farm in Westchester, New York. It’s an organic farm and restaurant. Everything was beautifully presented, and you could almost taste the quality of the soil and sunlight in the vegetables. To serve herbal tea, they come out with massive plants and scissors and cut the leaves right off there and then according to your choice.
Which country best exemplifies your idea of great cuisine? I’m not an expert, but I’m quite into Spanish cooking. It’s something that exemplifies this back-to-basics approach where everything relies on the freshness of the ingredients and simple cooking. It says so much about the people and the culture. I’m surprised this is only starting to take off in this part of the world.
Where is your favourite place to eat char sui?
There’s a place in Wan Chai called Joy Hing.I think it does the best char sui in Hong Kong.
Joy Hing Roasted Meat265-267, Hennessy Road, Wan Chai Tel: 2519 6639
Last meal before execution?
I think it would have to be steamed fish together with a really good bowl of plain, white rice. I think that in the moments before I die, I wouldn’t want to eat Western food anymore. You would almost be done with it at that point. Just steam a fish for me please and I’ll be happy!
Are you a kitchen maestro at home? I try to cook, but there’s just not enough time. I find it very enjoyable, relaxing, almost therapeutic. Home cooking – if you know how to cook – is so good because sometimes you just want a simple, quality meal. Not even the best restaurants in the world can compete when it comes to cooking with personal touches.
What do you think of Hong Kong’s food culture? No one can quite beat Hong Kong for variety, but in terms of local food we’ve been rather complacent. Chinese food around the world has the same Chinatown-esque quality to it. Alan Yau of Hakkasan in London is probably the one person who successfully created sophisticated Chinese food in a foreign location.
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