Hong Kong’s Top Private Chefs : Marissa Lau

Marissa Lau‘s life as a private chef began with her MM Kitchen Instagram page. An avid home cook, she started posting her dishes on social media to broaden and share her experience. Small-order requests from friends grew into private catering services, and the bookings haven’t stopped since.

What was your biggest hurdle when starting out?

Time management became more challenging when I had to learn how to adapt to unfamiliar kitchens, but now I’ve learned to customise the menu ahead of time, according to the kitchen sapce.

Why did you decide to become a chef for hire rather than taking the standard restaurant route?

I always want my diners to have an intimate and customised experience, which is why I talk to them beforehand so I understand their palates before designing the menu. It bring me so much joy to see my guests hosting a meal for loved ones at home at a private venue while they’re enjoying my food.

What was the dish that first put you on the map?

My signature dish is Carbineros with Wide Flat Noodles in Lotus Leaf. The sauce is rich and fragrant, because it’s made with a blend of pure red-prawn-head jucie and my secret spicy sauce. The latter gives the dish a spicy kick and also adds a Chinese twist to a dish that spotlights the Western red prawn. The wide flat noodles scoop up every last drop of the bright orange-red sauce. It’s always a hit.

How would you describe your cooking?

For every private kitchen service, I go to the market in the early hours of the dayto handpick top-quality ingredients, from seafood, meat and vegetables to even the smallest condiments and garnishes. My diners can always expect to be spoilt by the freshest and best quality ingredients , crafted into widely loved traditional Chinese dishes with my special twists. I’m obsessed with Chinese culinary heritage and learning traditional techniques that require an enormous amount of details and a lot – a lot – of time. I love to incorporate these intricate steps into my dishes while I experiment with ingredients not often associated with Chinese cooking.

Can you share any future plans with us?

I’ve been working hard on recipe development for a new hot-pot joint in Wan Chai called Let’s Pot. I created a selection of special hot-pot items with a Southeast Asian twist, ranging from soup bases and handmade dumplings with different fillings to all sorts of fish- and meatballs, and even snacks. I hope to do more pop-ups too, as I enjoyed every moment during my first one at the Rosewood Hong Kong last year. To share my love of cooking with everyone, I’m also exploring the idea of hosting cooking classes and hope to write my own cookbook one day.

What’s your “secret weapon” in the kitchen?

Instead of using store-bought chicken broth, I make my own supreme broth filled to the brim with a secret blend of ingredients and simmered for 10 hours. It’s the key to many of my dishes, as it brings an irreplacccable flavour that’s rich but not heavy, and incredibly clean and crisp.

Pick one ingredient to cook with in the month of August.

Hokkaido white…