A Seat at the Table
“My God, I think it might actually be The Chairman,” whispered my neighbour as the numbers slowly counted down on the screen. It was March 25, and a contingent of journalists and food influencers were gathered at Hong Kong restaurant VEA to watch the virtual announcement of Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants, an hour-long live feed of floating graphics and cobbled-together footage that took place in lieu of a physical awards ceremony. The names kept coming in: Gaggan and Le Du in Bangkok, taking fifth and fourth respectively, followed by Den in Tokyo at number three. Everyone knew that the conclusion would come in the moment that number two was announced—and The Chairman, which did not even rank within the top ten in the previous edition, had been conspicuously absent from the list throughout the ceremony. Either it had performed so poorly in the minds of the judges in the past year that it had dropped out entirely; or it would, against the odds, have a shot at making history as the list’s highest ranked Chinese restaurant ever.
It only took the next few words to send the entire venue into hysterics: “The best
