Ricardo Chaneton, the award-winning Hong Kong chef behind Mono’s single-ingredient tasting menus, on how he nearly became a doctor
The Venezuelan-born chef creates French dishes with South American twists on seasonal tasting menus
The first 100 Top Tables Rising Star award goes to chef and recent restaurateur Ricardo Chaneton. Although Chaneton is not new to the culinary scene in Hong Kong having spent four years as executive chef at Island Shangri-La’s French fine dining restaurant Petrus, Mono is the first restaurant where he can express who he really is – and the results are outstanding.
“I came from France to Petrus,” says Venezuelan-born Chaneton, who worked for seven years at three-Michelin star Mirazur under visionary chef-owner Mauro Colagreco.
“Petrus was my first restaurant as executive chef, but it wasn’t mine. I didn’t build it or create it. Petrus for me was when you graduate and want to specialise in something, I learned so much there.”
Now, as chef and co-owner, he has partnered with Yenn Wong’s JIA Group. “Mono is my first restaurant where every day I work to be a better cook and chef, I can do the things I really want to do,” he says. “When I met Yenn I had so much respect for her. Every time I talked with her I learned something. It is interesting the way she works and she has a similar passion.”
“We discussed the restaurant and what we should do. I mentioned French technique with Japanese ingredients. Yenn didn’t even say what I expected – ‘Again, another one’ – referring to many fine dining restaurants doing the same. Instead she said, ‘What about being true to yourself? Where are you from?’ And that phrase alone, changed everything. She made me understand that she wanted something different. She sees things where no one else does.”
Chaneton serves single (hence Mono) ingredient-driven seasonal tasting menus. He creates French dishes with South American twists such as Miéral pigeon with mole. “If you take out the mole, it would be so French, traditional and typical. Pigeon goes well with spices, but it also goes very well with chocolate and coffee,” he says.
Chaneton says he “never considered being a chef, I wanted to be a doctor. But it didn’t happen. I was too lazy to study but thank God, he led me another way because I do not know what kind of doctor I would have been.” He checked out the hospitality industry with a friend, but missed the deadline to enter. “I met another friend who was studying in culinary school and he said it was very good. I told my dad but he wasn’t too happy. My dad thought I was crazy.”
