Chinese painter Wang Hai (王亥) and his wife Wang Xiaoqiong (王小琼) opened the Sichuan private kitchen Da Ping Huo more than twenty years ago. Mrs Wang was a fine chef and worked in the kitchen producing genuine Sichuan dishes as well as entertaining customers with Chinese folk songs and popular ballads.
The couple retired in 2011 and current owners Wendy Wong, at one point a protégé of Wang Hai, and Calvin Chan took over. To celebrate Da Ping Huo’s 20th anniversary the new owners have invited folk soprano Li Yilin (李怡霖女士) to revive the old traditions and the vocalist is slated to perform acapella every Sunday to Wednesday at 8:30pm and 9:30pm until mid-June surrounded with Wang Hai’s art.
The menu retains many of Mrs Wang’s – who spent a year as guest chef at the Mandarin Oriental overseeing their weekly Sichuan night – original recipes including Mrs. Wang’s Roast Beef ($388), Mapo Tofu ($180), Chengdu Fish Fillets in Hot Chili Oil ($480), Hot and Sour Noodle Soup ($128) and Spicy and Hot Wood Ear Fungus ($128). New seasonal dishes include Lettuce Wrap with Minced Pork and Celery Bites ($208), Spicy Fried Prawns with Lotus Root ($388), Sichuan Spicy Chicken Pot ($388), Traditional Steamed Prawns ($388), Kung Pao Chicken ($208), and Stir fried Fish Fillets with Pepper ($388). There’s also a 5 course set lunch menu available ($120).
Da Ping Huo:
L/G Hilltop Plaza, 49 Hollywood Road., Central. Tel: 2559 1317
The South by Southwest music festival or SXSW as it’s more popularly known is one of the largest in the world. And for over a decade SXSW has published thousands of DRM free tracks from it’s participating artists. This year’s release features over 1500 tracks and more than 10 gigabytes of music, FREE.
Abigail Reynolds: based in Cornwall, United Kingdom, Abigail Reynolds studied English Literature at Oxford University before pursuing Fine Art at Goldsmiths University. Her interest in books prompts her collages, sculptures, films and most recently, printmaking. The ideas driving Reynold’s work are based on reportage photography books, her interest in networks of association and how our sense of time is affected by technology. She has exhibited at art institutions and galleries in London, Vienna, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Eindhoven. In her presentation at Art Basel in Hong Kong, Reynolds incorporates a large-scale sculpture which will print her sourced images onto glass for the first time.
Newsha Tavakolian: born in 1981, Newsha is a Tehran based photo-journalist and artist. Early in her career she produced photo documentaries in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Pakistan and Yemen and gained international recognition with work published in magazines and newspapers such as Time, Der Spiegel, Le Monde and the New York Times. Tavakolian’s exhibitions include Thomas Erben Gallery, New York, Aaran Gallery, Tehran, and Otto Gallery, Florence. In her photography installation for Art Basel in Hong Kong 2016 she documents the lives of nine Teheran residents combining wall size scenery with a large video screen and several photographs of varying sizes into an installation drawn from her forthcoming exhibition and book ‘Blank pages of an Iranian photo album’
Alvin Zafra: born in 1978 in Quezon City, Philippines, Alvin graduated from the College of Fine Arts at the University of the Philippines in 2000 and won the Dominador Castaneda Award for Visual Essay. He’s exhibited at West Gallery, Quezon City, Singapore Art Museum, Singapore, and Mori Art Museum, Tokyo. In his exhibition at Art Basel in Hong Kong, Zafra explores two different cities and their architectures. The drawings presented are based on photographs he took in the National Capital Region of the Philippines and in Hanover, Germany.