OFM Awards 2022: Lifetime Achievement – Shun-Bun Lee | Meals & drink business

Towards the tip of the summer season Shun-Bun Lee, proprietor of the New Loon Fung restaurant in London’s Chinatown, discovered himself missing a dim sum chef for his six-strong group. However he knew what to do. He went as much as the kitchen and began filling the prawn har gau dumplings himself. His son, Sunny, exhibits me {a photograph} of the compact Mr Lee, in good collar and tie, placing to good use the dim sum abilities he first realized in Hong Kong nicely over half a century in the past. “My father is a little bit of a legend amongst dim sum cooks in Chinatown,” Sunny says proudly.

It’s a beautiful story, however the winner of our Lifetime Achievement Award has abilities that reach far past the proper pleating of a translucent seafood dumpling. They’re qualities that additionally go far past his restaurant’s kitchen. He is among the final of that technology of Chinese language restaurateurs to have arrived in London within the Nineteen Seventies who continues to be within the enterprise. In that point, he has turn out to be a pacesetter and a supply of recommendation to fellow members of Britain’s Chinese language neighborhood, at first informally and for the final 13 years as chair of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce UK.

He was nominated for this award by the chef Andrew Wong of the 2 Michelin-starred A Wong in London’s Victoria. Wong had first acquired to know him when Lee was buddies along with his grandfather, additionally from Hong Kong. “Mr Lee is the one that creates neighborhood,” Wong says. “He supplies continuity for that neighborhood as a result of he’s been right here, working within the restaurant world for therefore lengthy. He understands our enterprise and the challenges we face. He’s a realist. He is aware of who to ship us to speak to for recommendation on authorized or monetary points or issues like fireplace rules. When folks within the Chinese language hospitality enterprise want recommendation and help, Mr Lee is the one they go to.”

Over a dim sum lunch of garlicky duck tongues and char sui buns, of tightly wrapped sui mai and shiny har gau, Mr Lee displays modestly on a life working in and supporting Britain’s Chinese language restaurant sector. “As a result of I’ve been right here for 47 years,” he says, “I do have that historical past. I need to encourage and to assist the following technology.”

Though he got here from a household of cooks and restaurateurs, he had hoped to go to school, however the untimely demise of his father meant he needed to discover a strategy to earn a residing. He educated within the intricacies of dim sum, a cornerstone of the Hong Kong Chinese language culinary repertoire, earlier than coming to London in 1975 aged 23 with simply £300 in his pocket. Right here he mixed a enterprise correspondence course with working in eating places round Soho, significantly an unlimited place on the location of what’s now the Trocadero.

“Chinatown was a really completely different place again then,” he says. There have been solely round 25 eating places in comparison with the numerous multiples of that as we speak. “After work, we’d all meet on the similar native Chinese language bakery.” At present, his restaurant can serve greater than 100 completely different sorts of dim sum. “Again then, it was possibly 40 or 50 at greatest as a result of we merely didn’t have the elements.” When it got here to greens, they principally needed to make do with broccoli slightly than bok choy or choy sum. They couldn’t get their fingers on the fitting sort of flour for his or her cloud-like char sui buns. “We needed to study to make use of what was obtainable.”

After a interval operating a restaurant in north London, he returned to Chinatown and have become a companion in a variety of eating places earlier than, in 1990, opening the much-loved Harbour Metropolis on the japanese finish of Gerrard Road. For the primary 5 years he was within the kitchen cooking the restaurant’s famed dim sum earlier than shifting to entrance of home. A lot has modified through the years, he says, not least the prices. “The lease and charges on the Harbour Metropolis website have gone up fivefold.” Again then, waste meals was taken away by pig farmers to repurpose as feed, and every Christmas they’d be given a complete pig as a thanks. “Now we should pay £400 a month for waste to be taken away,” he says wryly.

There are different challenges, too. “There are numerous workers shortages so we have to spend money on coaching,” Mr Lee says. He absolutely understands why the issue exists. Whereas there may be typically an emphasis in Anglo-Chinese language households on passing on tradition, partly by means of the Chinese language college in Soho, run by the Chinese language Chamber of Commerce that he leads, a number of first-generation Hong Kong Chinese language restaurateurs don’t need their children to comply with them into the enterprise. Within the basic approach of immigrant communities, they need them to maneuver into professions. For an extended whereas, Mr Lee even tried to dissuade Sunny, who had studied surveying at college, from going into hospitality. “I believe he wished me to be a physician,” Sunny says, with a smile. “Now I run the Reindeer Cafe up on the Wing Yip centre in Cricklewood.”

Intriguingly, the best problem to the unique Nineteen Seventies technology of Hong Kong cooks and restaurateurs is now coming from mainland China, whose entrepreneurs are responding vigorously to a requirement for extra regional meals choices from the likes of Sichuan province, Beijing and Shanghai. Mr Lee believes they now have about half the companies in Chinatown. “Additionally they have companies again in China, so they’re nicely financed.” He has skilled this transformation in Chinatown first-hand. In 2013, he took over the location the place we at the moment are having lunch, which is above and owned by the Loon Fung grocery store on Gerrard Road. Initially, he ran it alongside Harbour Metropolis. Ultimately, after 25 years, he determined to let Harbour Metropolis go and focus on the brand new area. The outdated Harbour City has become Food House and specialises in Sichuan meals and could be very widespread. “However there may be nonetheless an urge for food for the type of dim sum we do,” Sunny says. “Particularly among the many older technology.”

What does getting this lifetime achievement award imply to Mr Lee? He smiles. “Over the 47 years I’ve been right here, I’ve labored very laborious,” he says. “I did it as a result of I need to assist the neighborhood. I need to assist folks turn out to be their very own bosses. However I didn’t ever count on to get an award for it. This award provides me the power to go on.” Though he’s now into his eighth decade, he says he’s “not planning to retire in the intervening time. I’ve nonetheless acquired my vitality.”

For some time we sip our jasmine tea and talk about the intricacies of fine dim sum. He talks concerning the chunk the prawns in good har gau will need to have. He tears open a char sui bun, to indicate me how deep and wealthy the filling should be. Ultimately he leads me out by means of the total eating room, now occupied virtually fully by extra senior members of London’s Chinese language neighborhood, catching up with one another over just a few plates of dumplings. Unsurprisingly, we don’t get a transparent run. Mr Lee stops at varied tables to say whats up to his many regulars, to be what he has at all times been: a hard and fast and dependable level in an ever-changing Chinatown.