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The chef-owner of The Chairman, arguably the world’s most revered Chinese restaurant, is the winner of the Icon Award as part of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2024. Driven by an innate desire to research deeper and improve further, Yip has rewritten the culinary rulebook over his career – and he’s not finished yet
For more than 35 years, Danny Yip has been on a mission to ensure Chinese food is recognised among the dining public as one of the world’s great cuisines. He began with the restaurants that he opened in Australia after graduating with an economics degree and continues the campaign to this day at The Chairman in Hong Kong. The latter, launched in 2009, was crowned No.1 in Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2021, becoming the first Chinese restaurant to win such an award.
Yip’s philosophy is simple: use the best ingredients, source seasonally and locally, and treat produce with proper respect. In 1980s Australia and in Chinatowns around the world, however, this was a radical approach, “because Chinese food was seen as cheap and fast,” says Yip. Even when he returned to his birth city and opened The Chairman, such an approach was still far from entering the mainstream.
At first glance, the largely self-taught chef-restaurateur seems an unlikely torchbearer for his native cuisine. The Chairman was housed in a rather nondescript space until a recent move to smarter surrounds. The food is presented plainly and lacks the photogenic flourishes often found among high-end establishments. And Yip eschews premium ingredients such as birds’ nest, sea cucumber, truffle and caviar. “We’re not fine dining, we’re more like a casual home-style restaurant with food that is made for sharing,” he says in typically understated style.
The Chairman's new space makes customers feel at home with a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere
What sets him apart as a culinary pioneer is the deep thought behind each dish, which cleverly reimagines Cantonese cuisine without compromising its identity. “In Australia, I cooked traditional food. With The Chairman, we pursue our own path and create our own recipes.” In the 15 years that the restaurant has operated, he says that it has evolved to become “innovative Chinese”, strongly rooted in Cantonese cooking.
Yip reads voraciously, scours cookbooks and talks to people from various backgrounds to discover new angles and techniques that can be applied to enhance Chinese cuisine. In addition to being a chef, Yip was a highly successful tech entrepreneur, running a publicly listed company in Hong Kong before selling it and opening The Chairman. His polymathic ability to think outside the box and bring fresh ideas to a notoriously traditional cuisine has helped win him legions of fans.
Only a handful of dishes are added to The Chairman’s menu each year. One of his signatures, camphor wood-smoked goose, took nine months to perfect. A new dish of cured pigeon involved more than three months of testing curing methods. The bird is left under the sun for 15 days, then marinated, charcoal grilled and served as is, an example of Yip’s ‘less is more’ approach to cooking.
The pandemic proved challenging for Yip and his loyal team because Hong Kong’s international isolation caused stasis. “We found ourselves in a creative bottleneck and had difficulty creating something ‘wow’. We knew we had to get out and collaborate with other people.”
So, when the city’s borders fully reopened in 2023, he set off to events in Taipei, Shanghai and Tokyo. “It worked! We came back inspired with so many new ideas,” Yip says.
Yip spent nine months perfecting his signature dish, camphor wood-smoked goose
One of those collaborations was at 102 House in Shanghai, a two-Michelin-starred and 50 Best Discovery restaurant. Its chef, Xu Jingye, cites Yip as one of his mentors. “Danny and I have never worked together, but we communicate a lot, and he taught me how to master the layers of flavour in Chinese food,” says Xu. “Danny breaks the inherent thinking about our food, yet it is unmistakably Chinese.”
Xu believes that Yip influenced a huge number of chefs and home cooks in the Guandong region through his long-running and widely read food column in Chinese-language newspaper Apple Daily, which ceased publication in 2021. “Even before we met, I was reading his articles, and they had a great influence not only on me, but on everyone who loves food,” says Xu.
Daniel Calvert, whose restaurant Sézanne in Tokyo ranked No.2 on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2023, believes Yip’s influence goes beyond Chinese chefs. “By coincidence, The Chairman was the first restaurant I dined at when I moved to Hong Kong in 2016 and it was fantastic,” recalls the British-born chef.
The two have since become good friends, and Calvert says he has learned much from his fellow chef: “He is multifaceted and has so much experience and wisdom and can talk about anything, not just food.” Calvert highlights the impact Yip has had on educating diners about the importance of quality ingredients and nurturing relationships with suppliers, paving the way for other Hong Kong restaurants to follow suit.
Crispy aged eel and salted pork belly claypot rice
“When you go to The Chairman you understand why it’s worth paying for, because the peas are so sweet and precious and the crab meat on top of your sticky rice is so perfectly picked,” says Calvert. “And no one gets better flower crabs than Danny. It takes so much work and time to build those relationships [with suppliers] to secure the best.”
Calvert sees The Chairman as a gateway restaurant accessible to non-Chinese diners, notwithstanding the challenges in bagging a booking. “Danny has long flown the flag not just for Cantonese food but Hong Kong food. I don’t know any visiting chefs or industry people who don’t want to dine there,” he adds.
The restaurant’s popularity and success is all the more remarkable because it has been driven almost entirely through word of mouth, with little marketing and PR and minimal social media presence.
Yip, however, does not see himself as an icon and considers discussion of legacy premature. “I don’t feel that we have done enough to leave a legacy. We have some new recipes and dishes, but that’s it,” he says.
Danny Yip’s efforts have helped to bring Chinese cuisine to the forefront of the Asian culinary scene
He also worries about the challenges of attracting young chefs, especially in Hong Kong. He credits the success of The Chairman to the stability of his team, most of who have been with the restaurant more than a decade, both in the kitchen and on the floor. But with most of them also aged over 50 now, Yip is aware of the need for younger talent.
“Our recipes and methods are so different that it takes three to four years to train someone to cook the way we do, even if they have experience working in restaurants. To remain consistently good, we must start the process now,” he explains. A partial solution is the recruitment of staff from mainland China, where more young chefs are keen to cook Chinese food.
Meanwhile, Yip and his kitchen team, led by head chef and long-time collaborator Kwok Keung Tung, remain focused on cooking the very best food possible. There are no plans to expand, and Yip points out that when the restaurant moved to new premises in Central, they actually reduced the number of covers, but installed a larger kitchen.
“I think we will still be around in the next five to 10 years but beyond that, I have no idea. We just have to keep getting better and make sure our customers are happy.” It is this humble, straightforward philosophy of continuous improvement that has elevated Danny Yip to iconic status – whether he likes it or not.
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The 12th edition of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, sponsored by S.Pellegrino & Acqua Panna, will be announced on 26th March 2024 from Seoul. To stay up to date with the latest news and announcements ahead of the ceremony, browse the website, join the community on Instagram, find us on Facebook, visit us on X, subscribe to our YouTube channel and sign up for the 50 Best newsletter.
