Past Clients: Art Basel HK Organising Committee & Slow Food HK

Soy sauce, an essential seasoning to Chinese dishes, was developed by Buddhists more than 2,500 years ago to complement their vegetarian diets. Dutch merchants have then brought it back to the kitchens of Sun King XIV in the late 17th century and named it “black gold”.

For this soy sauce workshop and dinner at Plantation (a creative space in Sheung Wan), we sourced different artisanal Hong Kong locally brewed soy sauce for the tasting to experience their smell, colours, taste and aftertaste. I have also invited Yuan’s (頤和園), a premium soy sauce maker and their private kitchen chefs to cook a Chinese soy sauce themed dinner Hong Kong Naturally Brewed Soy Sauce.

Guests had a lot of fun with the soy sauce spray bottles where they can spray onto fragrance strips and fan it around their nose to smell it. Also, people were spraying it into their mouths and also into their neighbours. There were a selection of white coloured food for dipping into the soy sauce samples like white mushrooms, tofu and squid. They were also complimentary to the soy sauce, so the umami soy sauce taste can be enjoyed fully. 

Hand drawn soy sauce placements act as a rating board for everyone, where they can stick different stickers to rate the different types of soy sauce samples. People also wrote many notes to keep track of which one they like the best! 

Afterwards, Yuan's private kitchen team did a cooking demonstration with soy sauce and served up delicious soy sauce inspired dishes like soy sauce braised pork, soy sauce fried whole prawns, soy sauce stir-fired noodles and Plantation's pastry team created the first ever(!) soy sauce caramel sauce paired with vanilla ice cream.