Good friends often make great collaborators. When chefs Daniel Calvert and Danny Yip met in person for the first time by chance at a restaurant in Kyoto in 2018, Calvert was already a regular at The Chairman, Yip¡¯s renowned Cantonese restaurant in Hong Kong¡¯s Central district.
¡°The first meal that I ever had in Hong Kong was at The Chairman,¡± Calvert recalls. ¡°I sat at the table by the door and had the flower crab. It was perfect.¡±
The experience marked Calvert¡¯s 2016 arrival in the city as the new head chef of the trendy neo-bistro Belon, where he worked for nearly five years. In 2020, he moved to Tokyo to launch Sezanne, the acclaimed contemporary French restaurant inside the Four Seasons Hotel Marunouchi. Nearly a decade later, Calvert, 36, still remembers the flavor of The Chairman¡¯s steamed crab ladled with aged Shaoxing wine and finished with chicken oil.
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