This Chinese diaspora cuisine (also known as Desi-Chinese) is very popular in South Asia, Lee says. “I call it ‘the fish and chips of India’. If Indian people go out to eat, Indo-Chinese is their number one choice of takeaway.” The style of cooking is reputed to owe its existence to a chef known as “Fat Mama”, who sold bowls of delicious chicken rice noodle soup in the Chinatown of what was then called Calcutta.
A group of Indian men enter the Harrow restaurant and greet Lee by name. They have travelled from Kent, a county southeast of London, and are regular customers – happy to make the two-hour journey to enjoy an Indo-Chinese meal.
“Ninety-nine per cent of my customers are originally from South Asia,” Lee says. “Less than one per cent are Chinese. There are other places to eat traditional Chinese food nearby.
“Most Londoners are just confused by the restaurant. They don’t know what Indo-Chinese food is, although when they try it they do like it.”
There’s no pork on Lee’s menu, and all the meat served is halal – a courtesy to Hakkaland’s many Muslim customers. More than half the menu is meat-free, as Lee enjoys catering for vegetarian guests.
“This area of London is known as Little Gujarat, and Gujaratis eat a lot of vegetarian food. I want them to feel welcome here.”
Hakkaland’s vegetarian dishes seem popular. Every table in the restaurant has ordered “Tai Pai Paneer” – fingers of house-made curd cheese, dusted in cornflour, fried in the wok, lying under a colourful fresh chilli and capsicum sauce. It looks a little like Sichuan fried tofu, but instead of the silky texture and delicate flavour of bean curd, it has the salty, dairy richness of dense-textured paneer cheese, with a clout of chilli heat.
“This is a really classic Indo-Chinese dish,” Lee says. “You can find a version of this all over India.”
The restaurant is spacious, seating 150 guests on two floors, with dark wooden tables and leather covered chairs. It is modern and minimalist, with just a few Chinese characters decorating the paintwork.
Certificates on the walls show evidence of Lee’s success over the two years Hakkaland has been open; a flat-screen television plays footage of Lee receiving an award for his cooking.
Lee’s grandparents moved to Kolkata from a small village near Guangzhou in southern China, he says. Born in 1971, Lee grew up in Tangra, in East Kolkata, home to many Chinese families working in the leather and carpentry trades. During the 1970s and ’80s, the Chinese population of the city was about 10,000, he says, but it dwindled and is now closer to 2,000.
“When I was growing up, about 60 per cent of the Chinese population [in Tangra] were Hakka,” Lee says. “Now a lot of Kolkata Chinese have moved to Canada, America, Australia and even Vienna, Austria, to seek new opportunities.”
Life in the 1970s for Kolkata Chinese was hard. The Sino-Indian war in the 1960s had seen many members of the community deported or imprisoned. And although thousands did return to their homes in Tangra, money was scarce and work limited.
Lee’s family had financial difficulties during his childhood, when he learned the importance of being frugal with ingredients.
Lee developed a great admiration for Wang’s cooking style. “Wang made Chinese food with Indian spices. He brought recipes into the kitchen and developed them. We thought of him like a teacher, and when you learn with someone for many years you learn a lot,” he says.
A well-known Indian chef based in London, Udit Sarkhel, invited Lee to cook Indo-Chinese food at his restaurant, Dalchini, in Wimbledon, southwest London.
“I came to England 18 years ago,” he says. “I was the pioneer of Indo-Chinese cuisine in Britain. It became very popular, but only with the Asian community.”
He worked at several restaurants in London before opening Hakkaland in 2016. “When I started I felt quite alone. But gradually people heard about me. Indian people miss this kind of food. They can get Indian food in any corner of London, but not Indo-Chinese. Now people call me the new Nelson Wang,” he says with pride.
Indians like a crispy texture to their food and enjoy richer, fattier sauces, Lee says, as well as heavy spices.
“The main thing about my cooking is that I use ingredients that you won’t see so often in a traditional Chinese restaurant. Potatoes, okra and cauliflower don’t feature in many regional Chinese dishes but we use them a lot in Indo-Chinese cooking. In Kolkata, potato is one of the most popular ingredients.”
Lee has created a kung pao potato dish with cashew nuts and fierce spice – a favourite with his vegetarian customers. Another dish that looks Chinese at first glance features slices of okra coated in the lightest batter and seasoned with salt and pepper. This method of cooking avoids the slimy texture created by braising okra, instead keeping it crisp. It has a fiery aftertaste – the dish is finished with crushed chillies and fried garlic.
“Even people who hate okra enjoy it salt-and-pepper style,” Lee says. Like Wang, Lee enjoys inventing new dishes for his guests. Two years working in Tanzania, East Africa, introduced him to mogo, a cassava dish often cooked by the roadside. Adding his own spicy twist to the starchy root, he serves it kung pao, salt-and-pepper, or garlic chilli style.
“It is one of my top sellers,” he says. “I have Asian customers who grew up in East Africa and they love it.”
One East African customer complained that Lee’s cooking was not spicy enough, so the chef rose to the challenge. “I made a special Sapo sauce dish for this customer. It is incredibly hot,” Lee says. “I went home and experimented using fresh red chilli, yellow bean sauce, ginger, garlic and dried red chilli soaked overnight [which makes it more spicy].
“The more you cook it, the more spicy it becomes. I cook this over a slow fire for 90 minutes until the sauce becomes thick.
“The customer came back, tried the dish and said ‘I am a fan of you’. This makes me happy. I want to create dishes for people, to learn what they want to eat. You have to serve classics, but some people want to try something different.”
His cooking is consistent, exciting and delicious – and has won numerous awards, including Britain’s “Best Fusion Restaurant” at the British Chinese Food Awards 2017, and Best Pan Asian Restaurant at the Asian Curry Awards 2018.
“These awards have drawn some local Londoners into the restaurant, but I would really like to see more British people making the journey from central London [about 20 minutes by train] or further,” Lee says.
He may get the opportunity to take his pioneering cuisine to other parts of Britain. Lee has been approached by a number of restaurateurs.
“I have had interest from people in Manchester, Leicester and Slough wanting to buy a franchise for Hakkaland. I do want to take it to different parts of the UK, but I am not quite ready yet. Until this place can run on autopilot, I can’t leave it.”
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