New Delhi, July 9 -- The sound that stayed with Amit Sharma from a food recce in Hong Kong was not the buzz of a night market or the clatter of a busy restaurant. It was the rhythmic clanging of the wok.

It became the foundation of his latest venture in Mumbai, a Cantonese restaurant called Jùun, housed inside the landmark Eros Cinema in Churchgate. "The thak thak of the wok was a constant across food markets," says Sharma, the chef and co-founder, who zeroed in on Cantonese because he believes it is a cuisine the city has not explored enough.

A regional speciality from southern China, Cantonese cuisine has had little room in the Chinese food scene in India. In Hong Kong, it is the foundation of everyday cooking, built on the wok a...