Silas Li

Where They Are Now

Brooklands College, Surrey, is where Silas Li trained before he moved into a career that brought him to Hong Kong in 1997 and into a private kitchen for Dickson Poon's family. That work demanded discipline, precision and the pace of household service, and those conditions set the terms for the method he would carry forward: controlled, exacting, and comfortable with close attention to detail. At Hong Kong Cuisine 1983, Silas Li now serves as Executive Chef, applying that private-service discipline to a larger restaurant operation. The shift from domestic cooking to a public kitchen changes the scale, not the standards. His approach still reads through flavour, texture and finish, with classical technique held in balance against a desire to make the food distinctly his own.

Signature

Braised boneless duck web stuffed in chicken wings, signature fried chicken, and smoked soy sauce chicken are the dishes that define Silas Li's hand. Each one depends on exacting treatment of familiar ingredients, with the work showing up in the construction as much as the result. The interest here is not novelty for its own sake, but the control needed to make a recognisable dish land with more detail, more texture and more intent. Those signatures fit the broader method running through Hong Kong Cuisine 1983: technique first, then refinement. Silas Li works from a base of classical discipline, but the food is not static. The point is to keep the foundations intact while shaping them into dishes with a clearer personal stamp.

In Their Words “Every cuisine has its own technique, but what makes Chinese cooking so fascinating is the fact that there are so many different ways to cook things.” The line is practical, not ornamental. It points to a cook who treats Chinese cooking as a field of methods, each one demanding its own handling. Variety, in this reading, is not a distraction from discipline but part of it. “Winning this award within a year of joining [Hong Kong Cuisine 1983] reinforces my decision to leave my comfort zone and create something of my own.” The statement frames the move to Hong Kong Cuisine 1983 as a deliberate shift rather than a break with what came before. The award reads as confirmation, but the more useful detail is the decision behind it: a willingness to work outside familiar ground and let the result define a more personal position.