Canada Goose
A rare bird has been spotted cooking traditional roast meats in Hong Kong
Kamcentre Roast Goose is an unlikely stage for a Canadian upstart. The Causeway Bay restaurant, tucked behind a bowling alley, is a classic Cantonese banquet hall — bright lights, red calligraphy scrolls, spinning Lazy Susans. In the kitchen, the siu mei pit is run by Fung Hou Tong, who spent almost 50 years at Yung Kee, Hong Kong’s legendary roast-meat house.
Into this world stepped 29-year-old Abby Hatcher — tall, blond, female, Canadian. “Very unusual,” recalls owner Jacky Kam, a fellow Canadian who organized the four-hands collaboration with trendy Ho Lee Fook last April. “I think she’s the first Westerner [to cook barbecue] in Hong Kong. When she came out, wow, everybody was surprised. She has such confidence.”
Cantonese barbecue is a dying tradition. Like dim sum, bamboo noodles and other specialties once passed down through long apprenticeships, barbecue masters are aging. Schools don’t devote time to teaching the skills, and young cooks aren’t willing to spend years learning over a blistering hot oven.
Hatcher, who’s from Welland, Ont., is a rare exception. She grew up with a Cantonese best friend who sparked her interest in Chinese food — one that deepened after working with Alex Chen, Roger Ma and Eva Chin at Boulevard Kitchen in Vancouver. In 2021, she moved to Hong Kong to work at Belon, a modern-French one-star Michelin restaurant. But it was Ho Lee Fook — a swanky Sean Dix–designed SoHo hot spot that is redefining Chinese dining — that gave her the chance to learn barbecue the traditional way.
“The old-school ovens look like big spaceships,” Hatcher says of the cylindrical roasters that run without heat gauges and leave burns “up to the armpits.” At five feet ten, her height has helped. “A lot of people have to stand on stools to reach inside.”
In Cantonese barbecue, chopping and plating is as important as roasting. At Kamcentre, Hatcher had the honour of learning directly from a master who had requested to cook with her. She is relearning everything she was taught in French fine dining. “With birds, instead of gliding around the bone to separate it cleanly, you have to cut straight through without leaving shards and make sure the skin stays intact.”
Not everyone approved of her modern plating; she spreads meat lengthwise rather than piling it high. “My chef criticized her style a little bit,” recalls Kam. He invited her back to continue training — a rare endorsement in a guarded tradition.
Now, Hatcher is stepping into the spotlight as head barbecue chef at the new Kimpton Tsim Sha Tsui Hong Kong, the city’s biggest hotel opening of the year, where she will debut her own signature — lamb rib char siu marinated with maltose and maple syrup.
— Alexandra Gill
Photography: Courtesy of Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, Abby Hatcher, and Kamcentre Roast Goose