Rob Drennan

Coming Up

Cross-border kitchen development shaped the way Rob Drennan works before HAKU. A job at Uchiko in Texas, United States, and a position at Maaemo in Norway placed his early craft across different service cultures and culinary contexts. The useful through-line is not geography for its own sake, but an approach to ingredients and technique that can move between places without using technique to cover the dish. The executive chef role at HAKU, held by Drennan since 2020, gives that background a Hong Kong setting. The cooking gathers experience from the United States, Europe, and Asia, then puts it to work through a present-tense menu built around ingredients, seasonality, and controlled invention.

Where They Are Now

The cooking at HAKU leans toward western-style fare, emphasizes premium ingredients, and is described by Drennan as eclectic. The menu is not organized around one exclusive genre. It works in creative modern cooking, drawing on Japanese produce and locally sourced ingredients from Hong Kong eco-farms, with refinement coming from material choice, structure, and contrast rather than from a rigid label. The dining experience is framed as Japanese fusion, using premium seasonal ingredients and creative techniques to reinterpret familiar dishes. Another description places ingredients “from near and far” together with innovative and creative techniques. For a working kitchen, that reads as a broad operating brief: source across distances, keep technique visible, and allow the menu to move between luxury, comfort, elegance, and playfulness without treating those registers as separate lanes. Menu highlights under Chef Rob Drennan include fried chicken with caviar, 20 hours Kagoshima pork, and Jerusalem artichoke ice cream. Each gives a different signal: crisp texture with luxury garnish, long cooking applied to a premium pork reference, and a dessert format built around an unexpected vegetable note. The Jerusalem artichoke ice cream is described as potentially strange-sounding but much-loved, which says something practical about the room’s tolerance for risk. Drennan states the aim plainly: “To do some cool and interesting new things.” At HAKU, that is expressed through a dining experience grounded in ingredients, seasonality, and craft while avoiding easy summary.

Signature

Signature dishes include Fried chicken with caviar, 20 hours Kagoshima pork, and Jerusalem artichoke ice cream.

In Their Words “The new menu will represent what I’ve learned in the places I’ve worked, from the United States to Europe, and now Asia.” “To do some cool and interesting new things.”

Honors

Rob Drennan has received Opinionated About Dining Asia Top 150 Restaurants, Creative Cuisine category: HAKU ranked No. 28 (2022).