When You Hit Rock Bottom, How Do You Climb Your Way Up? When life throws unexpected challenges at you, how do you channel the stress and pressure towards something constructive?
Join us for our inaugural Dinner With New Friends series – where we open our kitchen to 24 new friends for an evening of inspiring storytelling and sharing. Diners will enjoy a six-course dinner paired with a story of an ordinary person who has emerged from a transformative moment and lived to tell about it. So let your guard down. Come on in and experience what it is like to break bread with strangers in the company of a story that will inspire you.
Our first guest, Noch Noch Li, will reveal her downward spiral at the tender age of 28 — from her jet-setter life as an overachieving finance executive in London, Paris, Tokyo and Beijing — to being haunted by debilitating migraines and severe clinical depression. Bed-ridden for a year, she was forced to confront how she let her career achievements define her value as an individual. Using interactive exercises to help you look at the challenges you face in your life through a different lens, Noch Noch will share her insights, revealing how she achieved balance in her life and will show us how to decipher our own thoughts and emotions to help us all become more self-aware.
Influenced by Noch Noch’s stints in Japan and her use of Hong Kong comfort food for reminders of home, the dinner will be highlighted by Hutong Chef Cherry Li’s six-course menu. The meal will be composed of dishes tied to Noch Noch’s memories and experience, allowing diners to engage and share on an intimate and sensory level.
Date: Friday, August 16, 18:30-20:30
Cost: 250 RMB, 220 for members
Price includes one glass of wine and 6-course dinner:
Tricolor salad: beet carpaccio, melon carpaccio, pink radish carpaccio, goat cheese, balsamic jelly, crystallized walnuts, vodka aspicSashimi of catch of the day, yuzu emulsion, perilla leaf, physalis (golden berries), rice crackersMushroom napoleons/millefeuilles, mushroom butter froth, frisee, pine nutsDuck confit, spiced broth, candied orange skin, watercress
Grilled filet mignon, sweet ponzu glaze
Curry noodles: hand pulled udon, curry sauce
Cleanser of watermelon, cucumber, tequila, cream
Table-side painted dessert: plum-mango cigars, jasmine rice sherbet flambé, sesame crisps, ginger kuromitsu, sesame sugar
About Noch Noch Li
After seven years living the life she dreamt of (or so she thought) as an overachieving executive for a Fortune 500 company, Noch Noch Li suffered a serious stress-related depression that turned her life upside down. As she battles with depression, Noch Noch is on a quest to be the wake-up call for others in similar plights in her blog, NochNoch.com, where she muses on living with depression and self-awareness. Her writing is also seen in Forbes Woman, South China Morning Post, Expat Women, and other websites.
Her recovery is spent indulging in Chinese calligraphy, assembling jigsaw puzzles, baking, playing basketball, and creating Bearapy for those who need a boost of support. She is currently working on a book of her experiences.
Noch Noch was raised in Hong Kong and Australia. Having studied and worked in the US, UK, France, Japan, The Netherlands, and China, in addition to visiting more than 150 cities, Noch Noch has a broad understanding of international business and culture. She also devotes her time to charity work. She holds Bachelors degrees in Law and Politics from University of Hong Kong and Institut d’Etudes, Paris, and Master of Laws from University of London. Noch Noch speaks Chinese, English, French, can stutter along in Spanish, and one day hopes to master Arabic.
