For Hong Kong's sporting heroes the Olympics are already a memory, but our national culinary team is still in training and dreaming of gold. The team's culinary Olympics start tomorrow in Erfurt, Germany.
"Everyone says that taking part is the most important thing, that it doesn't matter if you don't win - but it does. We want to come first," says Hong Kong Chefs Association competition organiser Anita Cheng Wai-ching.
Cheng is calling time in the practice kitchen at a rehearsal. She squints at a clock on the wall and checks it against her watch. "It is 11 o'clock. One-and-a-half hours to go," she shouts over the kitchen din.
Beyond her, chefs hover, some at the stoves with steaming metal pots, others with pans of spitting seafood sausages. One prods a slab of pork belly, another lifts a tray of lightly browned biscuits from an oven, hoisting it above his shoulder and marching towards his workstation.
The team arrived at the Vocational Training Council training restaurant in Pok Fu Lam for a practice session at 4am. At 6am, prep done, they began cooking a three-course dinner they hope will win gold at the Culinary Olympics. Like its sporting counterpart, the cooking competition takes place every four years and aims to showcase the world's best talents.
Oscar Chow Kwok-ho, who works at The Sheraton, is team manager. For now, Cheng is letting him concentrate on the kitchen tasks at hand, but in the competition he will keep the time, as she is today, and approve dishes to be judged, after overseeing production. "I'm not nervous today, but in Germany I might be scared," he admits.
