Restaurants jump through regulatory hoops to provide charcoal grills
Strict rules on solid-fuel cooking are limiting options for diners, but some restaurants are jumping through hoops to provide it, writes Nan-Hie In
Hongkongers are missing out on a delicious cooking technique due to stringent fire safety regulations, but some restaurants are finding ways to provide their diners with food cooked over wood or charcoal.
Cooking over wood fires is a primal way to prepare food that no advances in technology could recreate. Writing in (1979), legendary French chef Michel Guerard said: "There are effective modern grills which work by gas, electricity, infra-red rays… but nobody has yet managed to reproduce the wonderful effect of wood smoke on food."
Food cooked over solid fuels such as wood and charcoal remains much-loved worldwide. In Italy, particularly in Naples, Neapolitan pizzas are baked in wood-fired, domed ovens, a centuries-old practice. In Shanghai, similar pizzerias can be found, including D.O.C. Gastronomia Italiana, with its wood-fired ovens.
In Korea, soy sauce marinated beef galbi and bulgogi are cooked over charcoal in table-set grills, the most common cooking medium in the nation's ubiquitous barbecue tradition.
Countless steakhouses from the Americas to Australia continue to grill meat over hickory wood or charcoal.
In Hong Kong, however, such options are rare.
