No rules, no roadmap: inside Hong Kong’s private kitchen movement

Private kitchens thrive in Hong Kong as a response to the city’s unique culinary landscape. For the cooks involved, these intimate spaces offer liberation from the immense stress of the high rental and operating costs associated with full-scale restaurants. Simultaneously, Hong Kong diners tend to chase new and unique dining experiences, a niche perfectly filled by private kitchens. In a broader sense, private kitchens are a mode of escapism, allowing diners to leave the real world behind and gather in a secluded environment, replacing their troubles with delicious, conversation-starting food.

These businesses are not merely pop-ups or catering services, but operations run by dedicated, independent individuals reclaiming their autonomy, offering highly personal, passion-led menus directly to the public.

Andrew Wong slicing his well-tested sourdough loaf (Photo: Wai Lam)

Andrew Wong's uni butter toast (Photo: Wai Lam)

For 22-year-old Andrew Wong, whose culinary education began by watching YouTube videos, a private kitchen is defined by its ability to offer intimate experiences for food lovers. It is not a place to simply fill your stomach, but a safe space for gourmets to enjoy the “chef’s personal approach to food”. Visitors to Wong’s private kitchen, Foodhub, he says, are “not expecting a certain cuisine or genre, but to taste [his] interpretation of what cooking should be”, through a menu inspired by moments in his life.

Kevin Kasparek at Pesto & Lab in Prince Edward, worked as an architect for 20 years before discovering a passion for cooking in 2016. He and his wife, Chris Lo, soon started their private kitchen, which serves up a pescatarian menu. Kasparek takes this dietary practice as a creativity challenge and delivers dishes where even carnivores don’t make you miss meat. A prime example is his “tuna rye”, a reinterpretation of New York’s iconic pastrami on rye. The private kitchen acts as a laboratory for him to experiment with everything from flavours to textures, blurring the lines between what something should be and what it could be.

Kevin Kasparek from Pesto & Lab (Photo: Wai Lam)

Kasparek serving Pesto & Lab food in his home (Photo: Wai Lam)

For cooks like Kasparek and Wong, who operate from their homes, the very foundation of their private kitchens presents a double-edged sword. While the absence of additional rent offers a significant financial reprieve, it inevitably blurs the lines between professional and personal life, challenging the establishment of clear boundaries and subtly diminishing the perceived allure of running such an enterprise.

While currently content with the intimate scale of Pesto & Lab’s operations, Kasparek acknowledges his desire for the broader recognition and increased revenue that often accompany creative ventures. To foster this growth, Kasparek and Lo plan to elevate their private kitchen’s visibility through curating themed events. Wong, meanwhile, harbours grand ambitions for Foodhub, seeing its scope as extending far beyond simply cooking for guests. Inspired by his YouTube heroes, he envisions sharing his passion and igniting a similar spark in others.

Marissa Lau of MM Kitchen (Photo: MM Kitchen)

At the other end of the experience spectrum, we have Marissa Lau of MM Kitchen, who is bringing the private kitchen directly to her diners. Lau’s private catering model makes her services even more intimate for her guests, as they are hosted in their own homes.

Unlike Wong and Kasparek, Lau embraces the challenges of cooking an extravagant meal in an unknown kitchen, believing the benefits to her guests are worth the effort. This mobile model also inherently elevates intimacy, not only for Lau and her client but also between the guests. It allows her client to adopt the role of host and for Lau to focus her strength on what she loves–cooking.

An important aspect, and benefit, of private kitchens is the relationship cultivated between the cook and guests. It’s not simply the chef creating a dish for the guest, but a mutual interaction that goes both ways.

Lau’s signature creation of fish maw claypot rice with back truffles (Photo: MM Kitchen)

Lau’s signature creation of red prawn with thick rice noodles (Photo: MM Kitchen)

Kasparek likens receiving comments from guests to an ice cube on a hot pan–while the ice heats up, the pan cools down—and an equilibrium is reached. He doesn’t want “people to come here because they’re hungry and then they eat and then they go home and they’re full”. Interacting with those he feeds enables him to discover trends in consumer preferences, as well as explore new ideas he may not have arrived at by himself, ultimately contributing to the evolution and growth of his business.

Wong also sees his relationship with guests as a way to further his own inspiration. He recalls a memorable instance where a guest extended an invitation to their own kitchen and served a roast, drunken chicken, inspiring Wong to further explore this creation himself. Such two-way interactions are invaluable and drive his creativity, as well as his growing desire to make an impact on people’s lives—something he believes is cultivated by working in a private kitchen, which transcends the typical chef-centric model, becoming more about the guests than the person feeding them.

Pesto & Lab is hosted in the couple’s home (Photo: Wai Lam)

Many of those operating private kitchens eschew the title of “chef”, seeing the humbler “cook” as reflective of their experimental, self-taught approach. Kasparek, for example, enjoys how “a perceived combination of ingredients [might] seem like it’s not gonna work but [through different techniques and processes], there’s a kind of magic and alchemy that happens.”

Wong’s interpretation of ankimo (monkfish liver) came from playing with renditions he’d tasted elsewhere. offers a glimpse into his creative process. Initially, he sought to recreate the version at Nordic-Japanese restaurant Arbor, served in a red wine reduction; then, after tasting the bruléed foie gras sushi paired with caviar at sushi chain Sushiro, he decided instead to combine these seemingly disparate inspirations into a dish uniquely his own.

Brûléed ankimo with smoked caviar from Andrew Wong (Photo: Wai Lam)

Lau, meanwhile, enjoys playing around with bridging culinary eras, exploring old-fashioned Cantonese dishes such as pigeon stuffed with shark’s fin and eight treasure duck but imbued with contemporary flair. Her signature creations include fish maw claypot rice and red prawn with flat rice noodles. This blending of heritage with modern aesthetics and tastes thrives within the private kitchen movement because its cooks have the freedom to invest the necessary effort and execution, and if it doesn’t work, it’s no great loss; based on feedback and the genuine connection afforded by the smaller space, an improved incarnation can be developed for the next guests.

Hongkongers love the latest, hottest, most exclusive thing, but these private kitchens are driven by far more than fitting into what’s trending; it’s about autonomy and connection.

Hojicha Basque cheesecake with mala ice cream from Pesto & Lab (Photo: Wai Lam)

Kasparek’s ‘tuna rye’ as inspired by New York’s iconic pastrami on rye (Photo: Wai Lam)

For these culinary mavericks, the private kitchen serves as a safe space to bring their creativity to fruition and to translate personal memories and emotion into something tangible. “I still don’t call myself a chef—[I’m] more of an artist just trying to find different ways to communicate and share feelings or memories”, says Kasparek. Wong reinforces this philosophy: “Food is a medium to [impress] a feeling on the guest”.

While restaurants aren’t going anywhere, foodies looking for novelty will continue to be drawn to these small-scale, exploratory experiences that only private kitchens can offer.

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