Those familiar with Hong Kong’s dining scene in the 2010s will remember Bjoern Alexander of Whisk!, the restaurant on the fifth floor of The Mira Hong Kong hotel in the city’s Tsim Sha Tsui neighbourhood. The restaurant has undergone a few changes since then, including getting rid of the exclamation mark in its name. Between 2012 and 2015, with Alexander at the helm, Whisk! was known for serving creative dishes such as king crab with pepper, finger lime and meringue, as well as a savoury green pepper macaron with foie gras.
The restaurant was on the crest of the French-Japanese dining wave alongside industry big guns such as Amber at Hong Kong’s Landmark Mandarin Oriental hotel and Ta Vie at The Pottinger, both in Central on Hong Kong Island. He was scheduled to lead a culinary project at the Tai Kwun heritage arts centre in Hollywood Road, Central, but unfortunately the wall of the complex’s former police married inspectors’ quarters collapsed during work to transform the complex in 2016, forcing the postponement of the project; it ultimately fizzled out completely. Alexander subsequently worked in Shanghai, before returning to Hong Kong for a short stint at the Island Shangri-La hotel in Admiralty.
Then, three years ago during a holiday in Thailand, disaster struck. “I was walking from 7-Eleven back to my condo and a car came out of nowhere and hit me,” Alexander recalls. “It was a very bad accident, one of my muscles was broken and I still have a lot of tis.