Food: The world is Daniel Calvert’s oyster
What makes a meal memorable? There are so many factors – the location, the company around the table, the wines drunk and of course, the skill of the chef. I still recall the revelation I had 30 years ago after my first meal at Harveys, where Marco-Pierre White was first in charge of his own kitchen. It was perhaps more pronounced, as I had returned that day from Paris, where I had eaten at several two star Michelin restaurants. Suddenly, I realised that his meal surpassed them all in skill and sheer pleasure.
On an occasion more than a decade earlier, while I was a war correspondent in Indochina, there was a memorable dinner in Phnom Penh in the closing weeks of the war. It was a harrowing experience, with constant rocket fire and an impending sense of doom as the perimeter around the city shrunk on a daily basis. As a diversion from this, a group of fellow correspondents had arranged for the best French restaurant in town to stay open after curfew. There was much consumption of Dom Perignon plus an entire suckling pig to help us forget about the miseries we witnessed. Despite the intermittent sounds of gunfire and mortars, we were able to leave safely, though the staff had to remain overnight, generously compensated by us for their exceptional efforts.
My recent visit to Hong Kong was hardly on the same level of danger as that, though it was impossible to avoid the roadblocks and conflicts between the police and protesting students. The interesting thing is that while there are always flashpoints in war or civil conflicts, equally, there are even larger zones where life proceeds on a more or less normal basis.
My Sunday lunch at Belon in Hong Kong, a self-described “Neo-Parisian Bistro”, can safely be filed away as more than memorable – instead, it was a revelation. This was spectacular cooking of the very highest level in a kitchen, which is smaller than the one in our own home in West London. And, there are only five chefs. It was certainly not happenstance that took me to Daniel Calvert’s Belon, as I had heard about him from other writers and chefs for the past year. But despite that, it was indeed staggering to be served dishes of the highest level of satisfaction and technique in such a modest location – a side street in SoHo, with a non-descript Thai Restaurant opposite plus a place called “Pop Vegan”.
Still in his early thirties, the boyish Daniel has an impeccable record of a decade spent in the leading restaurants of London (Pied a Terre), New York (Per Se) and Paris (L’Epicure) but this is the first place under his command.
The décor is nondescript, with a padded bench surrounding the dining area and simple wooden tables and chairs in the centre. My eye was drawn to a wall of empty bottles of the finest wines – Pétrus, Montrachet, Domaine Romanée-Conti, Domaine Raveneau – until I remembered that because Hong Kong has zero import duty on wine, these were all local collector’s BYOs rather than being on the wine list.
The meal began in a fairly conventional way – four starters – aged Comté cheese gougères, a generous loaf of leavened bread with salted Brittany butter, a hand made Saucisson de Bigorre and finally, a bombshell – a tiny tartlet with herbs on the top which was a Japanese version of taramasalata made of cured cods roe and with Japanese Bottarga and a herb called Mitsuba or wild chervil – a cross between parsley and celery leaves. It is always a sign of good things to come when something as non descript as this blows your socks off with its intensity and exotic flavour.
The oyster tartare with Ossetia caviar was almost equal to a similar dish at Le Cinq in Paris and the following Sanma “Nicoise” or cured Japanese mackerel with a Mediterranean mixture of vegetables and herbs was the only dish that didn’t grab my full attention.
Never mind, as the subsequent fresh Ikura (salmon eggs) wedged between a seaweed “feuilletage” was the dish of the day – layers of puff pastry with the popping eggs almost evaporating in your mouth.
There seemed to be no stopping him now – this was followed by a circular slice of “Foie Gras au Torchon” surrounding a confit of chicken and Champignons de Paris. I was curious how such a perfect combination was achieved and learned later that the central chicken portion was confited, rolled into a sausage and then frozen while the foie gras surrounding it was poached in a towel and hung for a week.
The next dish was a playful version of “Drunken Pigeon” with Celtuce (Chinese lettuce) and Sorrel, inspired by the Chinese version of drunken chicken, which simply means it is poached in an alcoholic beverage. Given Daniel’s severe case of francophilia, it was inevitably Anjou Pigeon prepared in a stock of Vin Jaune from the Jura with a sauce comprising the unused portions of the pigeon.
The next delight was a Hokkaido scallop in two versions – one with a sauce comprising four different types of seaweed and the other liberally plastered with fresh Alba truffles and cream.
What really impressed me with all of these dishes is that they were pitch-perfect and superbly balanced, yet Daniel refuses to resort to the usual short cuts, like sous-vide or hydrocolloids and meat glue so beloved by the Modernists such as Heston Blumenthal or Ferran Adria.
The hours were ticking by but there was one last main course – and it was certainly worth waiting for – a veal sweetbread “en brioche” with béarnaise sauce. Again, a highly technical dish with the sweetbread sautéed but still almost raw before being cooked in a spinach leaf and then surrounded by a shrimp farce and brioche. As a special treat we were given another slice of this, smothered in white truffles
I was almost too sated to manage dessert, but was glad to have managed it – a “Mont Blanc” or puréed chestnuts with whipped cream, although in this case nine individual miniature buns with portions of cream between them.
I hope I have managed to convey how extraordinarily accomplished this meal was – far far beyond what could be termed a “Neo-Parisian Bistro”. Daniel already has one Michelin star and a place both on the Worlds 50 (actually 100) Best and the Asian 50 Best but this is cooking of at least two star calibre. It is not just my opinion – Yannick Alléno, the most feted French chef, with two three star Michelin restaurants, commented under a picture of a dish I posted on Instagram… “The best in Hong Kong”. This is not to side-line other renowned Hong Kong Chefs, such as Richard Ekkebus with Amber, his two star restaurant which has made the bold – and successful – conversion to a dairy and gluten-free experience. It is just that it is indeed rare to come across a chef as young as Daniel, who is already creating dishes that are nudging perfection, which surely indicates that the best is yet to come.
Set Meals: from £125 a head plus wine
A la Carte – approx. £300 a head