PLAYING BACK

Sport was his first teacher: baseball taught him teamwork, the slopes taught him survival. Kitchens came later, with their own bruises and disciplines. Now chef Akira Back is playing on a new field in Hong Kong

- By Fontaine Cheng

The Henderson, designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, looms like a shard of glass frozen mid-spin, its curves catching the Hong Kong skyline. The ground beneath it was sold in 2017 for more than HK$23 billion—at the time, the priciest land sale in the world. It seems deliciously incongruous, then, that within this skyscraper, chef Akira Back wants nothing to do with stiff formality. “I don’t want hardcore fancy,” he says. “Hong Kong people already dress nicely anyway. I don’t want them to think, ‘Oh man, we have to dress triple nice.’ Just come, relax, eat, leave.”

It's a contradiction that makes perfect sense once you know his story. Back doesn't do tidy boxes; he calls his own food a “melting pot of culture”: traditional Japanese techniques filtered through a Korean upbringing, shot through with the swagger of Las Vegas, where he's now based, with a little of the anything-goes spirit of America. “I grew up in Korea and I lived in America. My identity is there and my palate changed. That's in the food. At my restaurants, you can bring your vegan friend or your friend who only eats meat. Everybody is happy.”

Now comes his long-awaited Hong Kong debut: Akira Back, joining a global list of 28 restaurants in cities from Paris and Dubai to Singapore and Seoul. On the menu, signatures that have followed him around the world: the wafer-thin AB Tuna Pizza with ponzu and truffle oil, toro tartare with caviar and nine condiments, 48-hour Wagyu short ribs that nod to his mother's galbi-jim (tender braised short ribs). Cooking that's playful and unbuttoned, refusing to sit neatly in any one tradition.