{"id":65041,"date":"2026-06-30T19:43:01","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T11:43:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=65041"},"modified":"2026-06-30T19:43:01","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T11:43:01","slug":"this-sauce-is-deeply-rich-packed-with-umami-and-created-in-hong-kong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/?p=65041","title":{"rendered":"This sauce is deeply rich, packed with umami \u2013 and created in Hong Kong"},"content":{"rendered":"


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Four years ago, Dan Gan was a restaurateur running Exotica Gelatea, a 200 sq ft (19-square-metre) Italy-inspired burger-and-gelato shop on Sharp Street in Hong Kong\u2019s Causeway Bay neighbourhood. The location was brutal.<\/p>\n

\u201cEvery person that stopped by or passed would say, \u2018You\u2019re dead. You chose the wrong location,\u2019\u201d Gan recalls. \u201cThere were about eight burger restaurants within five minutes\u2019 distance all around us, and they had much better traffic because some of them were global brands.\u201d<\/p>\n

With no other staff and a business he feared would fail, he threw himself into the kitchen in an attempt to create a signature burger sauce that might keep him alive.<\/p>\n

His restaurant at the time was built around an ancient Roman theme, so Gan looked back more than 2,000 years and unearthed the greatest elixir of the ancient table: garum, a fermented fish sauce full of umami<\/span>.<\/div>\n

After reinventing it to suit modern palates, what emerged was a savoury, complex marinade he eventually named Exotica Umami \u2013 Ex M for short.<\/p>\n

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\"Dan<\/div>
Dan Gan at Sagano, the Kyoto-style Japanese restaurant at the New World Millennium Hong Kong Hotel with which he is currently collaborating. Photo: Chloe Loung<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Created in small batches, the marinade has a base made with premium pork, herbs and spices left to ferment for around 80 days.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n


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Four years ago, Dan Gan was a restaurateur running Exotica Gelatea, a 200 sq ft (19-square-metre) Italy-inspired burger-and-gelato shop on Sharp Street in Hong Kong\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":65042,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[6542,15392,3569,5231,8750,4434,7683,15555],"class_list":["post-65041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bored-interesting","tag-created","tag-deeply","tag-hong","tag-kong","tag-packed","tag-rich","tag-sauce","tag-umami","wpcat-33-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=65041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/65041\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/65042"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=65041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=65041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=65041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}