Kitchen Ink

Professional cooks love their tattoos. Six Hong Kong chefs reveal their body art and the stories behind the ink.

- Tiffany Chan

It’s hard to miss Nathan Green at Rhoda. Most nights, he stands in the centre of the open kitchen like a conductor on stage, wearing a black T-shirt, jeans and a leather butcher’s apron. Even from afar, his tattoos are visible. What we can see of his body is covered with an elaborate mural of people and pictures. Sit at the chef ’s table and you can see his tattoos up-close: “good life” inked on his knuckles; his parents on the backs of his hands, almost kissing when he brings his hands together then pulled apart as he reaches for a spoon. He turns his head and there’s his daughter, Lily – a plump dark-haired fairy – sitting in the hollow of a lily flower. He passes a plate and a skull floats forward, menacing with a curved dagger, and close observers will notice a Rubik’s cube dissolving into a puddle onto his wrist. (“Our mental state,” he explains. “We all have meltdowns.”)

At Maison Libanese, James Harrison’s right arm is entwined in black vines, the branches of a tree that shoot off the handle of a Japanese knife, and climb up his arm. Nestled in the branches are vegetables: an irascible tomato grits its teeth and holds two pistols, a chilli pepper sports a slick Mexican mustache, a hippie broccoli has an afro, a cucumber enjoys a cup of Kool-Aid, a bunch of sour-faced grapes and a shrivelled eggplant puffing a cigar.

“I’ve always wanted to get a tattoo that didn’t necessarily say, ‘Hey look, I’m a goddamn chef ’,” Harrison says. “Like a pig or a Kitchenaid or ‘chef life’ on my arm. I didn’t want that.”