The Margarita Forés x Vicky Cheng Collab Celebrates the Food-Frenzied Ties Between Hong Kong, the Philippines

(SPOT.ph) Chances are, one of your earliest trips abroad was to Hong Kong, as it was for Chef Margarita Forés who first traveled there at the tender age of eight. At the recent When Stars Align dinner where she collaborated with Hong Kong's Chef Vicky Cheng, the 2016 Asia’s Best Female Chef awardee shares that she had worked there in the ‘80s and finds Asia's World City “so inspiring—the best food, I think, you can find there. Not just the local food, but also international cuisines. And I think that maybe that influenced me and my work so much.”

Not only the dining scene, but the cuisine itself of Hong Kong is a diverse landscape that marries Chinese, British, and Southeast Asian elements. This is especially true for Cheng, whose multicultural background adds more colors to his way of viewing the world, especially in the kitchen. The chef behind Michelin starred VEA and World’s and Asia’s 50-Best lister Wing was born in Hong Kong, spent much of his early years in Toronto, then moved to New York to learn to cook before eventually flying back to Hong Kong in large part as he missed Asian flavors. These experiences are all reflected in his cooking today as he melds his French culinary know-how with his Chinese background—which is why his menus features traditional Chinese ingredients (in particular, dried seafood like fish maw and sea cucumber) alongside continental bits like puff pastry and Oscietra caviar.

At the recent collaboration, held at Penthouse No. 66 at Grand Hyatt Manila, BGC with the Hong Kong Tourism Board, Forés and Cheng brought not just their respective cooking styles to the table. To celebrate Hong Kong and Philippines’ close ties, the two United Nations Gastronomy Tourism ambassadors also made it a point to highlight ingredients the two countries are known for, individually and in common.

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What went down at the When Stars Collide dinner by chefs Margarita Forés and Vicky Cheng

The two first presented different Chinese and Filipino ingredients to be used in the dinner, as if introducing us to the cast of characters prior to the unfolding of the story proper. “We wanted to collaborate together on most of the dishes to really bring out the best of both Hong Kong and Philippine flavors,” says Cheng. And collaborate they did, using ingredients sourced from one another’s homes in every course, up until the dessert.

Dried seafood, we learn, has a long history in Hong Kong cuisine, with roots in Hong Kong’s being made up of small fishing villages prior to being colonized by the United Kingdom in 1841; to this day streets, train stations, and more are lined with shops with trays and vessels of dried scallops, oysters, squid, prawn, and on the higher end of the spectrum, abalone, sea cucumber, and shark’s fin, among others. It continues to play an “important role” in Chinese cuisine and Cheng sought to tackle and highlight Chinese dried seafood when he opened VEA in 2015.

“[Chinese dried seafood] was a territory that I never understood, cooking French food only in North America [where I studied cooking before],” says Cheng, whose team prepared a sea cucumber dish for the lineup. “Coming back to Hong Kong when I decided to open this restaurant, I knew that the only way to make a difference in the community, cooking Chinese-French, was to fully understand Chinese dried seafood—but it was always cooked in French way. So understanding Chinese, how to do it traditionally, and then turning it into my French dish, that's [what we do at] VEA.” 

Another one of those sought-for dried delicacies is dried fish maw—the dried swim bladders of large fishes, typically used in soups and stews. As it turns out, we have a similar practice of drying fish maw for consumption here in the Philippines, specifically in Bicol. Forés, a known proponent of spreading knowledge about (and in the process, helping preserve) Filipino food heritage, brings out a small bowl of biti from Camarines Sur—the internal organs of abo fish that turn into roughly inch-length puffs when fried. Whereas Chinese fish maw tends to be large in size, the two chef explain, biti is a smaller, easier to prepare delicacy which she shares locals would typically snack on like they would chicharon.

There, too, is tonkin jasmine, a fragrant flower used in Chinese and Vietnamese cooking that we apparently have in the Philippines as well. “It was like a shocker for me when Chef Vicky's team asked us to find some,” Forés admits. “I had never heard of it before, but we researched and it turns out that they use it a lot in Pangasinan and in Ilocos… they put it into pakbet.”

Other distinctly Filipino produce and delicacies are given special mention: etag, the Cordilleran smoked and dried pork product praised by Cheng for its similarities to guanciale, makes its way to a special variation of XO sauce prepared for the dinner, in place of the more traditional Jinhua ham. And then there’s tabon-tabon, the native fruit with a mapakla (bitter-sour) quality and brain-like appearance, traditionally used in kinilaw to help neutralize the taste and smell of fish.

After the kitchen tour and brief intro we’re served a Show of Snacks, that is, a quartet of bites with flavors Hong Kong and the Philippines are known for. From Cheng comes the Golden Crystal Egg—a century egg gone clear—over hand-pulled noodles with Chef Vicky’s mala chili sauce for a numbing (but very welcome) kick; and Smoked Eggplant, meticulously braided (inspired by how Chef Vicky would braid his daughter’s hair, we’re told) and brightened by a housemade sour sauce. Forés brings to the party Ukoy “Malasugo” Kinilaw—kinilaw of blue marlin, biasong lime, tuba vinegar, and tabon-tabon, topped with Negrense ukoy (with tiny shrimps in a rice-flour batter) and Hong Kong shrimp roe. Her Banana Heart Salad rounds things out, delivering creamy-tangy forkfuls as it’s dressed in first-press coconut milk and topped with the aforementioned Bohol fish maw.

Soothing our spirits afterwards was the White Pepper Virgin Mud Crab Thick Soup—a warming, naturally umami soup imbued with tonkin jasmine, redolent with the umami of seafood, flecked with whisps of steamed egg white. Things go fiery as we’re served the next course of Bulacan River Prawn, Etag XO—a duo of ulang (river prawn) enhanced with a bisque using fat from the prawn’s head; and Hong Kong noodles spiked with a most deeply savory, smoky XO sauce using the smoked Kalinga black pig, dried fish, and chilies.

We arrive at a variation of the Wing signature that is the Sea Cucumber Spring Roll. Sea cucumber, as mentioned, is part of the dried-seafood arc—one of the “most luxurious and most important ingredients in Chinese cuisine” at that, Cheng explains. It’s braised in an umami-rich liquid until so soft and gelatinous it just about quivers, then gets encased in spring roll wrappers fried to an even golden brown and light yet resounding crisp; the roll is then underlined by a concentrated scallion sauce and, unique to the collaboration, julienned palm hearts, inspired by its usage in lumpia in Negros.

From there, we arrive at the Pomfret Fish Pares, Abalone Sauce Rice, where a sauce of abalone—another luxe seafood that’s often dried and used in Chinese cooking—adds a deeply savory thrum to the mix. Studded in the rice are braised jackfruit and preserved turnips, taking a page from Cantonese stewed beef and daikon; crowning the vessel of rice are slices of wild pompano fish. Finally, dessert: Snow Gum, Ube Gelato features dried snow fungus, a mushroom that takes on a jelly-like, chewy texture that’s great in desserts; Pili Nut Hojaldres brightened by guava; and Cebu Mango Mochi.

The four hands dinner also serves as a prelude to the Hong Kong Tourism Board (HKTB)’s 2024 Wine & Dine Festival, an annual food and drink celebration that takes place in October this year. “We are grateful for the opportunity to bring these two chefs together again to celebrate Hong Kong and the Philippines, we hope that this dinner will open more avenues for partnerships between our Filipino friends present today and HKTB," the board's Regional Director of Southeast Asia Liew Chian Jia adds.

With similarities between traditions and plenty of room for complementing each other where there are differences, it’s clear that Hong Kong and the Philippines have a close bond that we’re only scratching the surface in exploring and pushing the boundaries of. That food is a major driver of said relationship is, of course, only the most beautiful (and scrumptious) thing.

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