On a Culinary Mission

December 22, 2015 / by Constance Shen

On the eve of the Aqua Restaurant Group’s 15th anniversary, the outspoken restaurateur David Yeo is looking ahead to further global expansion.

We know you’re Singapore-born and that you got your start as a lawyer in London. But it seems that Hong Kong is Aqua’s home.

Well, I’ve lived in Hong Kong longer than anywhere else – it’s also my home.  

As the founder and creative director of Aqua, what has changed over the past 15 years?

I’m very lucky; it’s a creative job. What I do is no different than Giorgio Armani, who has a whole team of designers. I’m sure he doesn’t design every outfit. But he would say, “This design is within Armani’s guidelines” – the look and feel of an Armani creation. We are trying to do the same. My big passion now – I think everybody is catching on to it – is Spanish cuisine. It actually started with a glass of white in a bleak part of Spain. I was no longer limited to French and Italian grapes. I felt like a child that’d been given a box of pencils in colours he’d never seen before. 

How have your customers evolved over time?

It wasn’t so long ago that people were drinking Château Lafite with Coke. Now they’re moving away from Bordeaux. They’re more knowledgeable and are asking intelligent questions, such as “What’s the mix of grapes in this?” This is the level of sophistication of our Chinese customers today. 

Does that bring you greater challenges?

We’re always ahead of them. I never let my customers lead me. I show them what may be interesting to try. I think I would be in big trouble if they were telling me what I should be doing next. You don’t want to ring the doorbell and tell Mr Armani what he should be designing next season.

Is the idea of casual dining the diametrical opposite of fine dining?

In my humble opinion, fine dining has never had mass appeal, maybe because in the old days, it was highly formalised and you had to dress up for it. The cost is so high and you don’t want to dine like that every month. It was more of a celebration. These days, people take the concept of excellent food and they want to see it packaged in different ways. We do two things: first, casual dining, which is Shiro and Tivo, and then lifestyle dining, which is Armani Aqua – these go together. 

Could you share Aqua’s formula for success?

I don’t know whether I have a formula, but above all I don’t believe I could do it without my team. The other thing is to listen to your customers because you cannot dictate with every creative job. For example, in London, we tried to tone down the level of spiciness – but if it gets to a ridiculous point, we’d rather not serve the dish, because it would no longer be our food.

With the criticism you faced at the London launch of Aqua Kyoto and Aqua Nueva, how did you bring the business back on track?

I would say if you really know what you’re doing, you won’t be writing for a living – you’ll be starting a restaurant. They really pronounced their judgement on us straight away; before they’d even stepped inside, they had decided they wouldn’t like us. It was difficult for our staff when critics commented that if it was such a good restaurant, it wouldn’t need to hire such attractive girls – that almost brought our girls to the point of tears. I found it difficult to forgive. But within nine months, guests were queuing down the road to get in.

It has been said it’s the unconventional decor, rather than the food or drink, that gives Aqua’s restaurants their buzz.
I don’t do unconventional design. I do completely conventional stuff – but it’s how you do it that matters, though. I won two national awards last year – one for lighting and another, in the UK, for bar design. 

As an example, Tivo in Kennedy Town looks like a New York warehouse. 

Also, in the London building where we opened Hutong, there was a sort of suction device in the structure directly above the restaurant. This design issue meant that many businesses weren’t interested in leasing the space, but I actually made it my bar.