I was in Hong Kong a couple of days ago. It was mainly a business trip but I also managed to hook up with a chef friend named Rolando Schuller who recently opened a new restaurant called Aspasia in a boutique hotel in Kowloon, the Luxe Manor on Kimberely Street. I headed over there on Thursday evening afire with happy anticipation. Rolando—or Roland; he’s from the German-speaking Tyrol area of Italy so speaks both German and Italian—used to be chef in a restaurant in Happy Valley when I was living in Hong Kong in the 90s. He went on to open his own place in Causeway Bay, then moved back to Europe where he worked at a couple of Michelin-starred establishments before accepting a job as head chef aboard The Christina O., a huge (103 meters no less) yacht owned by Russian tycoon Roman Abramovich (the owner of Chelsea football club). Now he’s back in town and cooking with his usual focused passion. Roland doesn’t do fusion. Just classical Italian filtered and focused by his two decades of cooking experience. The result are distilled, intense dishes that breathe Italy. Risotto with broad beans, white asparagus and pork cheeks. Tiny gnocchi primavera—cooked with a fresh, light sauce of new vegetables. Squid ink pasta with clams and prawns, a description that doesn’t come close to conveying how wonderful that particular dish was. Like any other genius, Rolando is obsessive about getting the smallest things just right , can tell you for example exactly where all his ingredients came from, the prawns fished off Sicily (none of those nasty farmed ones) the pork from southern France that has never eaten anything but acorns etc. etc The devil, as they say, is in the details. Or in this case, God.
All in all, simple culinary heaven. And the best news from my point of view is that he’s opening a branch in Beijing in January. Beijing is rapidly developing in many areas including the range of its restaurants. But, despite some brave efforts there isn’t anything approaching a good Italian restaurant (actually, pace to Alameda and a few other places, there isn’t really a good western restaurant). Roll on Rolando!