Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Cooking is physical; it's easier to learn than playing golf. You chop food, you pan fry it - what else is there to it?
I like using iconic things. What fine dining restaurant can get you to eat a breakfast sandwich that's like baby food?
In London, the food critics are harsher, the clients milder; in Hong Kong, the clients are harsher, the critics milder.
I used to love eating rice and noodles, and that was all carbs, so I had to cut that out. I started eating mostly salads.
Bo Innovation is there for anyone who comes to Hong Kong and wants to learn about Hong Kong in the shortest amount of time.
People keep saying I'm westernizing Chinese food. No I'm not. McDonald's, KFC, Starbucks, have done it big time, way before me.
My mom wasn't a good cook. No, that was an understatement. She was really horrible. And in a Chinese family, that's a disaster.
With caviar, you place a blob of it on sour cream or on a lettuce leaf and everyone is happy. I'm trying to get away from that.
The Brits like to see their local chefs do well - when a foreign chef comes in - even Joel Robuchon - they are harshly critical.
Everything I do is about Chinese culture. My dishes have to symbolize something because they taste better when people understand.
I especially like to make my own ginkgo soup, bean curd sheet soup, and red bean soup. This way, I can control the sugar portions.
Those who come into my restaurants expect something more, expect my 'fingerprint,' and trust me to give them a different experience.
My grandmother passed away from diabetes. And my father died from heart disease as a result of diabetes. They were in their early 60s.
One good thing about being brought up with Chinese food from another country means that you're not a purist and you will accept deviation.
As I have to have low-sugar foods, I eat more berries, dragonfruit and kiwis. Aside from that, my go-to sweet treat is Chinese dessert soups.
It's good to go down because then you know you have to climb back to your old spot. And you can't be on top and not know that you can only go down.
Change is always good. You can't keep tradition all the time. Yes, Grandma cooked on a wood stove but she would have used electricity if she could.
I think it is important to grab the moment and be ready when the opportunity is in front of you, but people may not be ready when that moment arrives.
Lowbrow ingredients don't equal inexpensive or not tasty food. In fact, it requires even more skill to make something simple into something spectacular.
I was possibly the first to showcase Chinese ingredients. So I was one of the first to say, 'Hey, you do not have to use imported vegetables to make it good.'
A friend of mine had a private kitchen that was available and it was an inexpensive way of starting a restaurant and testing whether or not I could sell my cuisine.
For me, cooking is practical. That's the core of an engineer. Engineers are very practical designers and creative people. Every single thing I create has to have a purpose.
I honestly feel the term 'molecular gastronomy' is mostly misunderstood. It is not a style of cooking. Rather, it is a philosophy which encourages chefs to be more creative.
I went from two stars to one star to two stars to three. In the history of the 'Michelin Guide,' I don't think there has been any chef to go up and down - and then up again.
One of the reasons I'm called 'Demon Chef' is because in Hong Kong, people were calling me God chef, and I right away took away that term because calling yourself God is blasphemous.
I like using Pat Chun in several ways but the most common one is to pair with tomatoes and Chinese preserved olives because of its sweet taste. I turn it into a sort of Chinese balsamic.
It is not difficult now to make good food because we have sophisticated equipment and refined ingredients. Being innovative also helps you. It sets you apart from other chefs. But taste is king.
All the earrings are mostly crosses. It's kind of a contradiction to wear it since I'm known as the Demon Chef. They're all custom-made. Some are Tiffany's. Some are Stephen Webster from England.
We Chinese use a lot of ginger and green onions to flavor dishes but not to overpower them. Westerners have this misconception that we eat the ginger and green onion, but we leave those on the plate.
I will be doing a bit more television, but, you know, aside from 'MasterChef' which is judging, I really want to do some travel with something that can really show up my creativity or something I can be creative on.
One overseas diner told me that he was not going to come back to Hong Kong, but after visiting my restaurant he saw that there was more to our city than he originally thought, and he would therefore be back. That made me proud.
By the time I was in high school, I was big enough to beat the hell out of everybody who said anything to me. And I learned how to blend in. All of that made me a very confident man. A very aggressive man. I developed it to survive.
A dish should have flavor, texture, appearance and smell, but I'm doing it differently. We take Chinese food, play with your sentiments, memories of it, and then take you to the border; you won't fall over the edge, but you get excitement.
The 'Maverick Chef' is one concept that I would really want to do again because I am traveling from country to country taking from what is in that country that is iconic, special, funky, weird and doing it my way. That is something I really enjoy.
I said I want to get outside the box, but what can I change? I don't want my cookies to reek of ammonia, so we used baking soda instead of lye. We added ground almonds, which is expensive. We used butter, which is expensive. And we didn't want any food coloring.
I've ruined a lot of hotel towels. I did a shoot in San Francisco and stayed at the Mandarin Oriental. I must have ruined thousands of dollars worth of towels. I dye my hair once a week. The dye is not temporary. It stains everything. It stains tiles, that's how powerful it is.
A symbol in Chinese Buddhism is the lotus plant, which regenerates every year, symbolizing life, renewal, and the Buddha himself. Actually it is used in many Asian religions including Hinduism. Few people think of it as food even though it is used as an ingredient all the time.
I love to go to Hunter's Pizza on Huntingwood and Birchmount. That's in Scarborough, of course! It's been in the same family for two generations. It's been there since I moved there in '67, so it's been there for 50 years. I can't claim it's the best pizza in the world but I can say it's my favorite pizza place.