Earlier this spring, Mimi (@mimithor) and her husband Oddur (@oddthor) visited our tea bar again for their annual workshop in Hong Kong, this time bringing over 19 guests from around the world to appreciate the nuanced art of contemporary Chinese tea culture. 

To this day Mimi continues to amaze and inspire me with her effortless beauty and grace (a mother of 8 children can you imagine!), and her simple and no-fuss approach to cooking; creating the most beautiful dishes with minimal effort.   

After our workshop I took the opportunity to take Mimi to a old local tea shop in Sheung Wan, Hong Chong Tai Tea Shop (鴻昌泰茶莊). While the kettle was boiling, we had the chance to chat more over an aged puerh, kindly prepared by John, who took over the teahouse from its previous owner and saving it from certain destruction. 

Congratulations on your new book, A Kitchen in Italy! It is such a lovely publication that documents a year of family meals, created at your home. What does ‘home’ mean to you?

Home, to me, has never really been one particular place. I grew up in Hong Kong, spent my summers in France, lived in Paris, then Médoc, and now Italy. I think I have always carried home with me.

More than anything, home is the table. It is knowing who is going to walk through the door, what everyone likes to eat, the familiar sounds of people in the kitchen, dogs under the table, children coming and going. It doesn’t have to be perfect or even particularly beautiful. It has to feel lived in.

A Kitchen in Italy really came from that. It is a year of our life in Turin, told through what we cooked and ate together. When I look at the book now, I don’t only see recipes. I see that particular moment in our family life.

You are always in between Hong Kong and France growing up, how does this experience shape, or inspire you, in the philosophy of cooking?

Completely. I think those two worlds made me the cook I am.

Hong Kong taught me about appetite, intensity and spontaneity. Food was everywhere. Dim sum with my father, roast meats hanging in windows, wet markets, tea houses, noodles, seafood, the smell of a wok. Then every summer I would arrive in France and suddenly everything slowed down. There were long lunches, markets, gardens, cheese, bread, beautiful fruit, and meals that seemed to last forever.

They were very different food cultures, but what I eventually understood is that they share something important: enormous respect for ingredients, tradition and the pleasure of eating together.

Perhaps that is why I have never been very interested in food that feels overly complicated. I like food with memories behind it. I want to know where a dish came from, who cooked it before me, and why people still want to eat it today.

It is wonderful that we met through tea. Were you familiar with tea as a child growing up in Hong Kong? Or when did you really start to drink tea?

Tea was simply part of life growing up in Hong Kong. I don’t really remember discovering it because it was always around us, at dim sum, at home, in restaurants.

But one of my earliest and most vivid tea memories is of an old-fashioned herbal tea shop in Happy Valley. I used to love going there for leung cha, the traditional Chinese herbal “cooling” teas, or chrysanthemum tea, which was always my favourite. Sadly, the shop isn’t there anymore, but I can still picture it so clearly.

I think that was probably my first understanding that tea could be drunk for a purpose, not simply for pleasure. In Hong Kong we grow up with the idea of yit hei, that certain foods or even the way we are feeling can create too much “heat” in the body, and leung cha is traditionally drunk to cool and restore balance. As a child, I didn’t question any of this. It was simply something we did.

Then, of course, Hong Kong has this wonderful British-Chinese relationship with tea too. There was Hong Kong milk tea, lemon tea, and afternoon tea at the great hotels. So tea could be medicinal, comforting, social or simply delicious. Looking back, I realise it has been part of my life in so many different ways.

As I’ve grown older, I think I’ve come to appreciate the ritual of it even more. Putting the kettle on is such a small gesture, but it marks a moment in the day.

When we talk about tea, it is equally important to mention the teaware and tools on a tea table, as it is not only an aesthetic tool but also what takes part in making good tea. Same as cooking, a chef can’t live without their precious tools. Can you share with us your favorite tools in the kitchen?

I am quite loyal to my kitchen things. I like objects that become more beautiful through use rather than things that need to remain pristine.

First, of course, my kettle. It lives permanently in the kitchen because tea punctuates my entire day. 

Shop TEAWITH Kettle

Then a very good chef’s knife. Quality comes first, beautifully balanced and very sharp. I use it for almost everything.

A wooden chopping board, preferably an enormous old one with all the marks and scars of years of cooking. (Chopping board, i buy them in Shanghai st, the round ones)

My cast iron pots & pans. I have collected them over the years and I love the way they age. They are beautiful, but they are also proper working objects in my kitchen.

And finally, a wok (Okura wok). Perhaps this is especially on my mind because I have spent the last couple of years returning so deeply to the food of Hong Kong. There is nothing quite like the sound and smell of cooking in a very hot wok.

Food is your true passion. How do you find inspiration for your recipes?

Mostly by living and eating!

I am not someone who sits down and says, “Today I must invent a recipe.” Usually it begins with something I have tasted, seen at the market, remembered from childhood, or eaten somewhere on my travels.

Memory is probably my greatest source of inspiration. I can become obsessed with recreating a flavour I remember from twenty years ago. Then I start cooking it, changing little things, making it work in my kitchen and for my family.

Travel is enormously important too. I love discovering what people actually eat rather than what we imagine they eat. Markets, little neighbourhood restaurants, someone’s grandmother cooking at home. Those are always the things that stay with me.

Every year, you curate so many sell-out food workshops around the world. What are some of your upcoming events we should be looking forward to?

The workshops have become one of my favourite parts of what I do because they allow me to share a place in a much more intimate way. It isn’t simply a cooking class. We eat, cook, visit markets, meet producers and artisans, and hopefully by the end everyone feels that they have entered a little into the rhythm of that place.

I have a pre-Christmas workshop coming up in Turin this December, which is always magical because Turin is so beautiful at that time of year. Then in March 2027 I will be returning to Venice for another workshop, which I am particularly excited about.

We always end with Rapid Fire Questions with our TEAWITH guest, here comes Mimi’s answer! 

Cheese or Fuyu?
Cheese. I am half French, after all!

Hong Kong Style Milk Tea or English breakfast tea?
Hong Kong milk tea. No hesitation.

What’s the ‘GOAT’ recipe you have ever created?
That is almost impossible! But perhaps my crème fraiche roast chicken with herbs. There are more impressive recipes, certainly, but a perfect roast chicken is the kind of food I could happily cook and eat forever.

Your favourite food / restaurant in Hong Kong?
This is terribly unfair because Hong Kong is the one place where I could never choose just one. But Yung Kee (鏞記酒家) roast goose has such an emotional hold on me. It tastes of Hong Kong and of my childhood. If you asked me for a last meal in Hong Kong, roast goose would certainly be there.

If you could bring one famous chef back to life for dinner, who would it be?
Auguste Escoffier. But I would want him as a dinner guest, not in the kitchen. I would cook for him and ask a thousand questions. And I suspect he would have some very strong opinions!