Pride of place

After working in some of New York's finest kitchens, Austin Hu returns to Shanghai. Rather than trying to go international or fusion, the commitment Hu has made is to source local produce and cook locally. [Photo provided to China Daily]

Restaurateur Austin Hu locally sources 95 percent of the food he serves out of a dedication to sense of place, educating foreigners and making the world a better place. Xu Junqian reports in Shanghai.

Austin Hu's kitchen is like a little museum of local seasonal specialties from all over China. There's caviar from the sturgeon of Qiandao Lake in Zhejiang province's Hangzhou, wagyu beef from Liaoning province's Dalian and sparkling water from a pristine lake in Heilongjiang province, to name just a few of the items he stocks.

And the 34-year-old American-born-Chinese chef of Madison, a casual fine-dining restaurant in Shanghai, knows each of them and their "growing history" like the back of his hand.

Hu is serving top local produce in a Western establishment in a country where consumers have been scared by unceasing series of food-safety scandals and are willing to pay twice - or even more - the domestic market price for food with foreign labels.

"Up to 95 percent of my food is sourced locally. If we cannot source it locally, we cannot make it," says the chef and owner of one of the city's most popular restaurants. The other 5 percent that "has to be imported" is chocolate, olive oil and dairy products.

After working in some of New York's finest kitchens, such as the Gramercy Tavern, for a decade, the Wisconsin-born Chinese returned to Shanghai, where he spent most of his childhood, in 2010 and started his culinary venture.