Hong Kong’s Best Pastry Chef on the unique challenges of creating fine treats: 100 Top Tables 2023 award winner Don Ng oversees all The Royal Garden hotel’s cakes, pastries and biscuits – no easy feat
- Ng is executive pastry chef of the hotel’s Fine Foods Shop, specialising in French and Japanese pastries and cakes, and has worked for other hotels and Patisserie Tony Wong
- His time in Taiwan inspired an Assam black tea with white peach flavour, while other cakes have echoed Lunar New Year decorations or sprouted chocolate flowers, like on his lockdown Mother’s Day cake
Specialising in French and Japanese pastries and cakes, Ng has 15 years of experience, having worked previously for other hotels and for Patisserie Tony Wong. He is responsible for all the cakes, biscuits and pastries available throughout the hotel as well as in the Fine Foods Shop.
A typical day for Ng, and his team of 38, includes the making of 100 whole cakes of up to 16 different types, 250 individual cake slices across 16 varieties, 500 tins of butterfly biscuits (a bestseller), 50 tins of other biscuit varieties and hundreds of pastries.
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“My key responsibility beyond the conceptualisation of the products is to monitor production and ensure the product conditions and quality are up to our high standards,” he said, before adding, “I’m also responsible to keep a continuous improvement in order to make our products perfect.”
Ng says one of the main challenges of this demanding role is to manage the workflow, as this includes producing current products while at the same time developing new products, which are planned up to three months before launch.
Another challenge that Ng faces is staffing. “I think adequate manpower is a unique challenge to a large hotel environment. Since staffing keeps changing from time to time, and considering such a large scale of staff in the hotel, I have to arrange and ensure a good training process for all pastry chefs in order to maintain quality.”
Staying creative and on-trend is also part of his role and Ng seeks inspiration from social media, daily life and his own personal experiences. For example, Ng conceptualised and produced a cake inspired by the traditional decorations linked to Lunar New Year.
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Another example of creativity linked to personal experience came from his time spent studying in Taiwan. “I often drank tea at local shops, and there was a memorable Assam black tea with white peach. Later on I took this flavour profile and worked on translating that into cake form, which we successfully launched at the Fine Foods Shop.”
All of Ng’s cakes are noted for a refined elegance with highly decorative finishes. One that he is most proud of is last year’s Mother’s Day cake. The strawberry/yuzu/vanilla mousse cake was decorated with a large, intricate chocolate flower in shades of cream and dusty pink, with a truly realistic appearance. The flower for each cake was made individually, taking over one hour to complete.
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“Because of the Covid restrictions at the time many people were unable to go out to celebrate, which is why we decided on its floral decoration for this meaningful day, and good results were achieved,” says Ng.
