Agustin Balbi does More Good in Hong Kong

How the chef of Andō gives back to his adopted home by working with food charity More Good, a “family meal collective”.

At Andō in Hong Kong, chef Agustin Balbi creates a cuisine that expresses the culinary languages of East and West. By drawing on his Argentinian heritage and his culinary training in Japan, he artfully blends cultures to represent his experience but also his own identity. The restaurant has been incredibly well received in Hong Kong and as a way of giving back he works with More Good to feed people in need, from the homeless to refugees.

“We do it once a month,” explains Balbi. “We don’t do our normal cuisine, because the guests are not used to those flavors. It’s very important that we do something good for them, that makes them happy. We buy everything on the day, prepare it in our restaurant and then we deliver to More Good premises.”

More Good came out of Covid, when friends Brian Fung, Tim King, Kenneth Chan, Kiyoshi Hoshimi-Caines and Matt Abergel, got together and realized that restaurant kitchens were being underutilized during lockdown and could be put to good use. At the time, people in Hong Kong were feeling the economic effects of extended lockdowns and so the “family meal collective” was born in August 2020, operating out of well-known izakaya, Yardbird in the Sheung Wan neighborhood.

The idea was simple: to prepare meal boxes with the same care as they would for their family and friends, a sort of extended staff meal concept. The boxes were then distributed by a charity partner. Over the coming months the initiative grew, with more and more chefs joining in.

As social distancing measures were eased, the group began to explore ways to continue and scale their work. In December 2021, they opened their own space in residential neighborhood Chai Wan. As more meals were served, more and more chefs were pulled into the activity, Balbi being one of them.

“It sort of happened by accident,” says Balbi. “One of the chefs who used to cook for More Good had to go back the US, I knew how to cook so I just said ‘Yeah, I can do it.’”

“I decided to do it from the Andō kitchen,’ says Balbi, “just because I know where everything is and it’s a bit easier.”

After spending seven years in Japan and now six years in Hong Kong, Balbi has made a home in this part of Asia. Andō opened during the pandemic period, when economic times were difficult and it was a risk for Balbi, but it paid off, and while many restaurants shuttered in that period, Andō was full.

“During that time the restaurant was fully booked for two months,” says Balbi. “People really supported us. So, we wanted to find a way to give back. I come from Argentina, it’s a beautiful place, but still, it’s a third world country, so helping people in need is something I want to do. In Spanish we have a saying that ‘Where two people eat, three can eat’. There is never not enough food, in a way. One day a month will not kill us, and we can do something good. It is great fun we involve family members, we don’t wear chefs’ jackets, it’s casual and in the end, we manage to do something good.”

The effects of the pandemic period are still being felt by many. A More Good survey found that 85% of the charity’s beneficiaries in the local area had to forgo the use of fresh ingredients due to financial constraints, while only 7% of those surveyed rated their family's nutritional intake as satisfactory. These are stark statistics and More Good has been redoubling its efforts to help fill those nutritional gaps. With the help of donations, the organization continues to roll out meals as part of its education and food assistance initiatives.

For Balbi, the work continues, and the restaurant continues to thrive. A Michelin star arrived after the first six months of operation with the Guide praising Balbi’s ability to ‘realize his culinary vision from his unique vantage point’. It is through this cuisine that the chef weaves the threads of his life and experience together, creating a Spanish-Asian blend that uses ingredients of the highest quality and rigorous technique.

“Andō is very easy for me to do, because nothing is forced,” says Balbi. “It’s a combination of what I grew up eating, with my grandmother, she was from Spain and then I mix it with what I learned in Japan. It’s very natural, if you come to Andō, you don’t necessarily feel a mix of spices or flavors, but it is a very interesting kind of cuisine. It has some Spanish spice elements and some Japanese elements. I use the language of both cuisines to create my own.”

Balbi’s signature caldoso rice dish, ‘Sin Lola’, is inherited from his grandmother, but it’s obviously much more technical. It’s a Spanish dish with Japanese elements, the base is a dashi, the rice is a Japanese rice, the way the rice is cooked is Japanese style. The way it is served is Japanese in style. “In Asian cuisine, Japanese and Chinese, the last dish before moving to sweet is a starch, it can be a rice or a noodle, it depends,” explains Balbi.

With a Japanese wife and two children now living in Hong Kong his family is the literal embodiment of how the meeting of East and West can create something beautiful. “Life is good,” says Balbi. You can see why he wants to do More Good.