High-powered Italian motorcycles are a rarity on the car-clogged roads of Beijing - so when a Ducati roars down the road, the chances are the rider is restaurateur Alan Wong.
The California-born Wong operates at a fast pace in every area of his life: when not opening restaurants at the rate of one a year, whizzing around city streets, or blasting around a racetrack on one of his nine superbikes, Wong can be found snowboarding down mountains at breakneck speed.
Yet the 37-year-old has no swagger or smugness about him. The way he tells it, success with his chain of Japanese-style restaurants was a happy accident: had it not been for a chance visit to Beijing, where his father was working, he would still be working as a professional sports photographer, taking pictures of snowboarders and skateboarders.
He says: "I would say it is 95 per cent luck, I am the least ambitious guy I know and the least ambitious guy most of my friends know, even though I have been successful.
"I did not set out to have 10 restaurants, I just wanted one, and for it to be small. It was a fun project. When we did well, and the cash began to flow, there were a lot of other ideas that I wanted to try, a hotpot restaurant, a teppanyaki restaurant. The staff started growing and getting really good, and I had a full restaurant of keen staff and they wanted to open more and the market was ready for it."
The first restaurant, Hatsune, which opened more than 10 years ago, did away with the starchy formality and traditional decor associated with Japanese restaurants. Instead of staff dressed in kimonos, bowing and scraping, Hatsune featured servers dressed in pink, green and yellow T-shirts greeting customers with a friendly or a Californian "hi".
The open-plan decor at that, and subsequent restaurants, has the air of a trendy city bistro, a world away from the standard faux-Japanese lacquer screens, cherry blossom murals and bamboo-screened private spaces. All interiors are personally designed by Wong, who took a Japanese gangster theme, including yakuza-style tattoos on the wall, for his flagship restaurant, in the capital's business district.
