EEST, The Westin Gurgaon presents an exclusive pop-up with Chef Katherine Lim, together with House of Macau, on 28th October-1st November Chef Katherine is a third-generation Hakka Chinese chef based in Kolkata’s Chinatown. She is known across India for popularising her ancestral cuisine and its modern evolution through pop-ups at leading luxury hotels and award-winning restaurants. She anchors her cooking in the theme “I Am Not a Noodle,” a reminder that Hakka cuisine is far more than “Hakka noodles and chilli chicken.”
Hearty Hakka cuisine, progressive and global
Chef Katherine serves what she calls Progressive Hakka Chinese Cuisine. It pairs quintessential Hakka dishes that are rarely served outside Hakka homes with innovations and influences from Hong Kong, South-East Asia, North America and the Indian Ocean islands, where Hakka communities are scattered. Ancient cooking practices meet global influences, so every dish is unlike anything guests have tasted before.
Her food showcases the migrant Hakkas who have travelled from China to all corners of the world, making it a diverse cuisine with global influences. The Hakkas left their home on the plains of the Yellow River 1,700 years ago, escaping waves of invasion, war and famine. Today Hakka communities live and flourish in Australia, Canada, Europe, Peru, South-East Asia, the US and a corner of Kolkata’s Chinatown.
Guests can look forward to a menu led by four signature dishes: Typhoon Shelter Prawns, Salted Egg Yolk Chicken, Garlic King Oyster Mushrooms and Roast Crackling Pork. Together they reflect the range of Chef Katherine’s cooking, from quintessential Hakka flavours to dishes shaped by the places where Hakka communities have settled.
A cuisine rooted in home
Chef Katherine was born and raised in Amritsar, Punjab, where hers was the only Chinese family. At school she tried to blend in with her Punjabi friends, while at home her kung kung (grandfather) insisted the family speak only Chinese. Her grandfather had emigrated from China and set up a shoe business in Amritsar in the post-partition years. When the family moved to Kolkata, where Hakkas born there were secure in their roots, she found herself asking whether she was Punjabi, Indian or Chinese. She found her identity in food.
Since childhood she watched her grandparents and mother try to bring China to the dinner table, making their own soy milk and tofu, pickled mustard greens, lap cheung, lap yuk and egg noodles. Her mother taught her to make pickled mustard greens and lap cheung, and her rice cake recipe came from a cousin whose parents once sold them from house to house in bamboo baskets. Through conversations with Hakka friends and family around the world, and through her own research, she has discovered the richness and diversity of Hakka cuisine.
“This is the food I cook for my family, what we eat on a daily basis, so Hakka cuisine is very much alive in our homes. This is the living, breathing cuisine that I want to showcase, to tell guests that Chinese cuisine is much more than Hakka noodles and chilli chicken. I feel the younger generation has lost interest in learning about how and what our ancestors ate, food that has the best of China and India, food that unites. And who knows, soon, rice wine making could become as commonplace in India as Hakka chow!” – Chef Katherine Lim
Event Details
Date: 28th October-1st November
Time: 7-11 PM
Venue: EEST, The Westin Gurgaon
In association with: House of Macau
Pricing: ₹4,000 for 2
Menu: Ala Carte + Set Menu
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