Dubai: When Chef Ren Dingxu was eight years old, his grandmother had a problem. There were 30 people in the family, a celebration to prepare for, and far too much cooking for one person.
Chinese New Year was particularly demanding. In Chengdu, the capital of China's Sichuan province, the family would gather for the festivities, and Ren's paternal grandmother was responsible for feeding everyone. There were dumplings to make, vegetables to prepare and an assortment of traditional dishes that required hours in the kitchen. Her grandson was expected to help.
“My grandmother was always cooking the food, cooking the jiaozi (dumplings) and the traditional Chengdu dishes,” Dingxu tells Emirates 24/7.
“My grandmother was training me, she was cooking food for everyone.” However, at eight, he was just a boy helping his grandmother, because he could see her exhaustion.
“No, eight years, no understanding,” he says when asked whether he had already discovered a passion for cooking. “She wanted my help. So, yes, okay, I help.”
More than three decades later, at 41, he runs the kitchen at Hutong Dubai, the Chinese restaurant in DIFC recognised in the Michelin Guide Dubai selection.
By his early teens, he was cooking for his family himself. At 16, he enrolled in culinary school. He had learned to cook, he liked doing it, and there weren't many other options that appealed to him. “So no other choice,” he adds.
He spent two years at culinary school and went on to train at the Shangri-La hotel in Chengdu.
A Sichuan chef discovers the world
Chef Dingxu’s early professional training was rooted in Sichuan cuisine, with its formidable reputation for chilli, peppercorns and bold flavours. Mention Sichuan food to most people, and they think of heat.
“Oh, spicy hot pot,” he says. But the cuisine of his childhood is considerably more complicated.
“Sichuan cuisine is chilli and Sichuan peppercorn,” he begins, before listing the other ingredients, “…there are pickled chillies, pickled vegetables, fermented bean preparations, ginger and garlic.” Sourness matters. So does aroma. The heat is only one part of the experience.
“We put a lot more of it in the sauce,” he says of ginger and garlic.
Professional life eventually took him well beyond Chengdu. Singapore was his first overseas posting, working with Sichuan cuisine. Malaysia followed, and then came India.
He spent two years working at the Taj hotel in Udaipur, a city whose culinary preparations used heat as much as his native Sichuan.
By 2018, he reached Hong Kong and joined Hutong. The restaurant was already known for a menu drawing on several Chinese regional traditions.
Chef Dingxu explains that its culinary identity was built around the cooking of Beijing, Sichuan and Xinjiang. A year later, Hutong was preparing to open in Dubai.
“My boss told me, in Dubai we open Hutong restaurant. You want to go?”
He was keen. “I said yes. Go.”
Why Dubai?
It is a question he answers easily. He had heard about the city before he arrived. He had seen pictures and was intrigued by the number of nationalities living here.
“I knew of Dubai, before,” he says. “Wow, I thought. It's a beautiful and international city. Open city.”
For a chef who had already worked in Singapore, Malaysia, India and Hong Kong, the international character of Dubai was extremely appealing.
He would be cooking for people from different backgrounds, many of whom might have little or no familiarity with his regional Chinese food. There was also another key factor - safety.
Ren recalls an incident after arriving in Dubai when he left a bag in a taxi.
“I took a taxi, lost my bag. They called me back,” he says. He compares it with places where losing something might mean never seeing it again. The incident stayed with him.
There are other things that matter too, including the sense that everyday life is easy and that a family can settle without constantly struggling with language or administrative difficulties. He has lived in several countries, and he knows the difference it can make.
But arriving in Dubai also presented a tough challenge. How do you cook for a city where the people sitting around one table may have grown up eating entirely different cuisines? His answer was to eat out to understand what people ate.
Dubai-It in pursuit of culinary perfection
When Hutong was preparing its Dubai menu, Chef Dingxu didn't simply assume that dishes popular in Hong Kong would work equally well in DIFC. He visited other restaurants. He paid attention to what people appeared to enjoy.
“We go and taste at other restaurants,” he explains. “We check the menu. Which dishes Dubai people like?”
Internationally, Hutong had established dishes whose recipes needed to remain consistent across the restaurant group. But there was room to develop dishes for Dubai. The research continued after opening.
For the first six months, he studied the restaurant's ordering patterns. He was relentless.
“Open for the first six months, I will check the system, which dishes say are top one, top two, top three, and cancel what’s not being ordered. Then make new one.”
He was equally interested in what guests said.
“How is the food, how is feedback,” he says, describing the questions put to customers.
Their responses could lead to changes in sauces, seasoning or spice levels. To him this daily pursuit of culinary perfection was using the “Dubai-It” philosophy to provide an unforgettable experience for diners.
Dubai likes its Sichuan food, just not quite so hot
For a chef from Sichuan, where chilli and peppercorns are fundamental to so much of the cooking, he discovered that diners here did not necessarily want their food fiercely hot.
“Dubai people don’t like the strong, the spicy, they like less spicy, is better. Some people like the medium spicy. Don't like high spicy.”
A tough place for Sichuan cooking, but he understood that a dish could retain its essential flavours without overwhelming a guest who wasn't accustomed to the fire of the original. He began developing recipes accordingly.
One example is Hutong's Sunshine Chicken. He describes a dish built around crisp skin, tender meat, fried onion and a soy-based sauce. “Sunshine chicken is crispy and tender,” he says.
The onion is deep-fried, bringing another layer of texture and flavour to the dish.
He talks about the appeal of the sauce, the crispness and the combination of ingredients.
“More people like the stronger flavour, stronger sauce.”
He does not think of it as a compromise. The cooking is distinctly Chinese, but he knows that a guest who orders Sichuan food may want the excitement of chilli and peppercorns without necessarily wanting to spend the rest of the meal recovering from the experience.
However, when it comes to kitchen standards, the smiling, flexible chef disappears.
New chefs joining Hutong must learn the restaurant's recipes and methods. He constantly watches what happens in the kitchen, tastes everything.
“All the chefs cooking that are already put on the runner table. I will check. I will taste. Okay, it's good, go. Not good, take over.”
This discipline is also central to how he thinks about Michelin recognition.
Hutong Dubai is included in the Michelin Guide selection. “It is important for chefs, for restaurants, very important. It pushes for quality.”
A classic example is the famed Peking duck from Hutong. Traditional preparations, he says, often place enormous emphasis on the skin.
“Beijing duck only the skin is crispy. Meat, no taste.” Hutong's preparation takes a different approach.
The duck is stuffed with seasonings and aromatic ingredients - spices, apple and carrots. “Crispy skin and the meat is every tender, and more the flavour.”
Dubai makes the difficult things easier
Running a Chinese restaurant outside China brings its own challenges.
Some ingredients are readily available. Others require planning, particularly certain vegetables and products that aren't part of everyday cooking in the country where the restaurant operates.
Chef Dingxu has worked in enough places to know how frustrating that can become.
In Dubai, he says, finding ingredients is generally straightforward. If he needs something, he contacts a supplier.
“I will call the supplier. I need this. Can you help me find this one?”
The answer is immediate. “Dubai is an international city. Any vegetable you have it,” he says.
That access allows him to reproduce established recipes, consider new dishes and maintain consistency without constantly worrying that an essential ingredient will be impossible to obtain.
A city where his family can feel at home
Chef Dingxu is married and has a 15-year-old daughter. His family is an important part of his decision to remain in Dubai.
He talks about the convenience of shopping and the availability of Chinese language assistance in a city where so many people come from elsewhere.
His wife, he explains, does not need to be fluent in English to manage everyday life.
“If my wife doesn’t speak English, in Dubai, it is easy, the life,” he says.
He gives the example of shopping at Dubai Mall, where Chinese language assistance is available. “You have the Chinese language signs. So life is easy in Dubai.”
He compares that openness with places where not speaking the local language can make daily life difficult. “Here it is open,” he says, repeatedly.
That also gives him the opportunity to discover cuisines that he might not have encountered, easily - such as Iraqi and Yemeni food.
He sees similarities between the way certain dishes are prepared and the cooking traditions he already knows. “I think the cooking is the same, but they use ingredients differently.”
Six years and counting
Chef Dingxu has spent approximately six years in Dubai. Asked whether he thinks he would have achieved the same success had he stayed in Chengdu, he answers without hesitation. “No, Dubai is better. I go to different countries. Only in Dubai I live for a long, long time.”
There are plans for further expansion within the restaurant group. He mentions prospective openings in Abu Dhabi, Ras Al Khaimah and Paris. But he is happy where he is.
“Yes, I'm home. It’s my hometown. I love Dubai.”
----
Anupa Kurian is a Dubai-based senior editor and writer with nearly 28 years in journalism. She has been a food editor. Anupa writes across gastronomy, culture, health, environment and the people who make a city what it is, drawn to stories that reveal themselves in the details.