Ten years ago, the three of us—Black Sheep Restaurants founder Syed Asim Hussain, New York chef and restaurateur Mario Carbone and me—sat on one of the maroon banquettes in Carbone Hong Kong. Much of the restaurant was still a construction site, just weeks from its grand opening.
At the time, Carbone was a year into running his eponymous restaurant on Thompson Street in New York’s Greenwich Village; it has since become a celebrity hotspot and one of the hardest tables to book in Manhattan. Hussain, who had just four restaurants under his belt then, now operates more than 35 and is on the brink of taking the Black Sheep brand global.
Last November, we found ourselves in conversation again, in the same space—older and ever so slightly wiser; except this time, it was days away from Carbone Hong Kong’s tenth anniversary. “Ten years is not nothing,” says Hussain, “especially in cities like Hong Kong and New York, cities that are obsessed with newness. So this is a legacy that I’m very proud of.”
In those ten years, Carbone Hong Kong has become what Hussain describes as a “phenomenon”; a place of unashamed opulence where neanderthal-sized cuts of spectacular-quality meat are served, Caesar salad is made tableside with warm garlic bread croutons, two types of anchovies and three types of cheese, and animated staff break into song multiple times per night—so much so that if you visit enough, you too will know the lyrics to Tanti Auguri, the Italian version of Happy Birthday, off by heart.
Syed Asim Hussain at Carbone Hong Kong (Photo: Zed Leets/Tatler Hong Kong)
“I love that [our guests] have become part of our memories, and that their memories have become a part of the world we’ve created,” says Hussain. “When I first read about Carbone in New York, I loved that a chef was doing something that wasn’t just about what was on the plate—it was about all the elements that go into a brilliant dining experience.”
Carbone chimes in, “For us, it’s not interesting to just feed people. That’s not why we do what we do and it doesn’t provide us enough gratification to keep going. The drug of choice here is a masochistic one, which is in the details; the theatre of it all.”
Hussain agrees, saying, “There are fleeting moments when everything makes sense. The lighting is beautiful, all the elements come together, the maître d’s in a good mood, the song’s right, the food looks phenomenal … and this is why we’re masochists, because it happens in a fleeting manner. You can’t catch it or hold it in your hand. But we live for these moments.”
“At Carbone, you’re not just going out for dinner; it’s a night out,” says Carbone. “We set the stage, we have our cast, our wardrobe, we perform at the same time every night for a different audience. We want to tell a story.”
Mario Carbone's eponymous restaurant in New York is one of the hardest tables to book in Manhattan (Photo: Zed Leets/Tatler Hong Kong)
For Carbone the man (and, one could argue, the restaurant), that story begins in a very Italian part of Queens, New York, where he grew up: on special occasions such as birthdays or first communions, his family would go to a restaurant called Park Side. “A lot of questionable people hung out in that area, and it was owned by a man named Tough Tony,” Carbone remembers fondly.
“We weren’t a family that was well off enough to just go on a Tuesday; there had to be a reason to go. So, whenever there was a celebration in our family, all I cared about was, ‘We’re going to Park Side. We’re eating good tonight’. As a 13-year-old, chubby Italian kid in Queens, it didn’t get better than that.”
Now that Carbone the restaurant has become a go-to venue for people celebrating life’s big moments, from birthdays to promotions and even marriage proposals, Carbone says, “When I look around the dining room at Carbone and see the birthdays, the singing, I directly associate dining out like that with celebration. I think back to growing up and celebrating at Park Side, and it all makes perfect sense.”
I love that [our guests] have become part of our memories, and that their memories have become a part of the world we’ve created
By - Syed Asim Hussain
“What we do is intrinsically strange,” Hussain laments. “The stories that are so personal to us—from travel, from childhood memories—to recreate that in this format and share it with strangers night upon night is a strange and intimate thing that we do.”
Hussain’s story is also one that comes full circle. In the mid-Nineties, when he returned to Hong Kong from boarding school in Pakistan every summer, he would work at his father’s restaurant, The Mughal Room on Wyndham Street, cleaning bathrooms and taking out the rubbish. It was also there that he had his first after-service beer— an important and defining rite of passage for anyone working in hospitality.
That same space on Wyndham Street is now Black Sheep Restaurant’s New Punjab Club—the world’s first Punjabi restaurant to win a Michelin star.
“The training started then; the seed was planted, and I didn’t even know it,” says Hussain. “It was in my blood and bones. I’m doing what I was born to do.”
Despite being continents apart, looking after their respective empires in Hong Kong and New York, Hussain and Carbone seem to have grown in the same direction both professionally and personally—a kind of kindred, long-distance symbiosis.
A decade ago, the pair were restless and hungry—“rattling the cage” was how Hussain described what they were doing in our first interview.
Hussain considers Carbone a "brother" (Photo: Zed Leets/Tatler Hong Kong)
Today, they’re still passionate, but also more grounded—less “rattle”, more intention and finesse.
“I’m trying to shift my focus onto things that have more gravitas and weight and value,” says Hussain, adding that before sitting down for our conversation, the pair played tennis in the morning and spent time with Hussain’s father. “I never used to take time for things like this before—but now I do. [Mario is] my brother; I want to hang out with him.”
“It takes us a while to realise there isn’t a finish line,” says Carbone, referring to his journey as a chef and restaurateur. “When you remove the idea that there is a destination you’re heading to, you realise the gift is the journey. There’s no tape you’re going to break at the end, because there is no end.”
Agreeing, Hussain adds, “I’m not as obsessed with the next stage of this journey any more. If someone told me ten years ago that I’d have over 40 restaurants in the best cities in the world, I’d say, ‘Sign me up now!’ But now that I’m here, I want to do things in a more meaningful manner.”
Carbone continues: “We’ve occupied the same boat from the beginning, which is a beautiful thing. We didn’t sign a deal to open in Hong Kong—we signed a deal to work with Black Sheep. We were on the exact same journey and we’ve always leaned on each other. There’s not a lot of colleagues we can really open up to like that.”
That bond—that trust—is ultimately what has made Carbone Hong Kong the success that it is today. “When Mario and I decided we were doing this, one thing he said to me is, make sure it’s a Hong Kong restaurant,” says Hussain.
And although much of the restaurant echoes its Thompson Street counterpart—the maximalist interiors, dizzying patterned floors and, of course, its signature spicy rigatoni vodka— Black Sheep has managed to make it uniquely its own. For example, the buttons in the banquettes in New York are NYPD buttons; at Carbone Hong Kong, they’ve used buttons from the Shanghai Police Department. Diners are also presented with the now famous “Jackcello”, a homemade limoncello brewed by Black Sheep’s beloved maître d’, Jack Gonsalves.
“It was important for us that we have references in the room that give a quiet nod to where and who we are,” says Hussain. “Carbone Hong Kong is a phenomenon, the same way Carbone New York is. For it to succeed the way it has, it can’t be a Disneyland copy of the Carbone on Thompson Street. What I’m proud of is that Mario gave me something that is his legacy—his name’s on the door—and not only have we looked after it, it’s flourishing.”
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