A pair of his father’s old tandoor ovens helped Hong Kong restaurateur Asim Hussain achieve a dream — the world’s first Michelin star for a Pakistani restaurant, an accolade he hopes will fire interest in the country’s often overlooked cuisine.
Like many of Hong Kong’s 85,000-strong South Asian population, Hussein’s family trace their lineage in the territory generations, when it was a British colonial outpost.
His great-grandfather arrived during World War I, overseeing mess halls for British soldiers, while his Cantonese-speaking father owned restaurants in the 1980s and 1990s.
Photo: AFP
Hussein, 33, already had about 20 eateries in his group when he decided to embark on his what he described as his most personal and risky project yet, a restaurant serving dishes from Pakistan’s Punjab region, the family’s ancestral homeland and where he was packed off to boarding school aged six.
His father, a serial entrepreneur who once served as Pakistan’s ambassador to South Korea, suggested that he restore two old tandoors from his then-shuttered restaurant collecting dust in storage.
“He comes from a generation that doesn’t throw things away,” said Hussain, dressed in a traditional knee-length tunic and sitting in a restaurant decked with paintings by Pakistani artists. “Actually the results are better than if we had new ovens, because these things improve with age.”
Photo: AFP
Those tandoors, frequent trips to Lahore, Pakistan, to perfect recipes and a kitchen overseen by head chef Palash Mitra, earned the New Punjab Club a Michelin star just 18 months after it opened its doors.
The success made headlines in Pakistan, a country that is unlikely to see a Michelin guide anytime soon and whose chefs have long felt overshadowed by the wider global recognition gained from India’s regional cuisines.
“It makes us proud, it makes us very happy,” Waqar Chattha, who runs one of Islamabad’s best-known restaurants, told reporters. “In the restaurant fraternity it’s a great achievement. It sort of sets a benchmark for others to achieve as well.”
Hussain was keen to note that his restaurant only represents one of Pakistan’s many cuisines, the often meat-heavy, piquant food of the Punjab.
It does not come cheap — as much as US$100 per head.
“I’m not arrogant or ignorant to say this is the best Pakistani restaurant in the world. There are better Pakistani restaurants than this in Pakistan,” he said.
However, the accolade has still been a “great source of pride” for Hong Kong’s 18,000-strong Pakistani community, he said.
“It’s bringing a very niche personal story back to life, this culture, this cuisine is sort of unknown outside of Pakistan, outside of Punjab, so in a very small way I think we’ve shed a positive light on the work, on who we are and where we come from,” he said.
It was the second star achieved by Black Sheep, the restaurant group that was founded six years ago by Hussein and his business partner, veteran Canadian chef Christopher Mark, and has seen rapid success.
However, the expansion of Michelin and other Western food guides into Asia has not been without controversy.
Critics have often said reviewers tended to over-emphasize Western culinary standards, service and tastes.
Daisann McLane is one of those detractors.
She described the Michelin guide’s arrival in Bangkok last year as “completely changing the culinary scene there — and not in a good way.”
She runs culinary tours to some of Hong Kong’s less glitzy eateries — to hole in the wall dai pai dong food stalls, African and South Asian canteens hidden inside the famously labyrinthine Chungking Mansions and to cha chan teng tea shops famous for their sweet brews and thick slabs of toast.
While she was “delighted” that New Punjab Club has been recognized, she had her reservations.
“There is a lot of world cuisine operating way under the radar in Hong Kong and it doesn’t get noticed by Michelin or the big award groups,” McLane said.
For some, any recognition of Pakistan’s overlooked cuisine is a success story.
Sumayya Usmani said she spent years trying to showcase the distinct flavors of Pakistani cuisine, so heavily influenced by the tumultuous and violent migration sparked by the 1947 partition of India.
When the British-Pakistani chef first pitched her cookbook to publishers on her country’s cuisine, many initially balked.
However, in the past few years, attitudes have changed, she said.
Pakistani-run restaurants in the West that once might have described themselves as Indian are more proudly proclaiming their real culinary heritage, she said.
“I think it’s really good that people are coming out of that fear of calling themselves specifically Pakistani,” she told reporters. “It’s nice that Pakistanis have started to take ownership of what belongs to them.”
Back in Hong Kong, Hussain said the hard work has only just begun.
“I joke with the boys and I say that ‘it’s the first Pakistani Punjabi restaurant in the world to win a star, let’s not be the first one to lose a star.’”
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
YELLOW SHIRTS: Many protesters were associated with pro-royalist groups that had previously supported the ouster of Paetongtarn’s father, Thaksin, in 2006 Protesters rallied on Saturday in the Thai capital to demand the resignation of court-suspended Thai Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra and in support of the armed forces following a violent border dispute with Cambodia that killed more than three dozen people and displaced more than 260,000. Gathered at Bangkok’s Victory Monument despite soaring temperatures, many sang patriotic songs and listened to speeches denouncing Paetongtarn and her father, former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, and voiced their backing of the country’s army, which has always retained substantial power in the Southeast Asian country. Police said there were about 2,000 protesters by mid-afternoon, although
RSS