Category: Interviews
Chinese Food and Culture Beat, Updated 1/22
Interviews conducted in Chinese and translated
Q&A With Chef Ho Chee Boon of Hakkasan New York: Flavors Around the World + Chinese Fine Dining (Village Voice)
Q & A With Shi Peng and Phillip Fu of JTYH: Noodle-Making, Media Fame + a Noodle Video (LA Weekly)
6 Great Dim Sum Dishes at Sea Harbour (LA Weekly)
Decoding Dean Sin World: Mrs. Lu’s Background, Wholesale Business + Crab Shell Pastry (LA Weekly)
Q & A With John Huang of Mao’s Restaurant: Hunan Cuisine, Electrical Engineering, Fish Heads + The Expansion of Chinese Food In L.A.
Interviews
Meet David R. Chan: The Man Who Has Eaten At Over 6,000 Chinese Restaurants (LA Weekly)
6 Things We Bet You Didn’t Know About the Boba Truck + New Oxnard Store Location (LA Weekly)
626 Night Market Organizers Respond to Community Feedback (LA Weekly)
Q & A with The Fung Brothers: Food Nerds, Asian Vegetable Superiority (LA Weekly)
Q & A with ’626 Night Market’ Founder Jonny Hwang: Community, Street Food (LA Weekly)
Q & A With Yisrael Aharoni, Israeli Celebrity Chef: Chinese Food In Israel, Hollywood + Being A DJ
Q & A with David R. Chan: 6,165 Chinese Restaurants, Googling Himself + Flying Out To Springfield
Q & A with Boba 7 Founder Elton Keung: Green Tea Heineken, Labobatory + Alcoholic Boba
Best Of Food Lists
Shanghai’s best Western food under RMB 50 (CNNGo)
50 Best Chinese Restaurants in the USA (CNNGo)
10 Best Dim Sum Restaurants in Los Angeles (LA Weekly)
10 Best Handmade Noodle Restaurants in Los Angeles (LA Weekly)
Taste Test: Best Dan Dan Noodles in New York City (Village Voice)
Best Shaved Ice In Los Angeles (CBS Los Angeles)
Best Taiwanese Restaurants in the San Gabriel Valley (CBS Los Angeles)
Best Hot Pot Restaurants In Los Angeles (CBS Los Angeles)
10 Best Taiwanese Breakfast Restaurants in Los Angeles (LA Weekly)
10 Best Eats In Arcadia: Neighborhood Grub Crawl (LA Weekly)
General Chinese Food
10 Classic Taiwanese Dishes (LA Weekly)
L.A.’s Idea of Taiwanese Food vs. What Taiwanese People Really Eat (LA Weekly)
A Crash Course In Chinese Dining Etiquette (Settling Magazine)
A Guide to a Traditional Taiwanese Breakfast (Serious Eats)
Vegetarian Chinese Restaurant in Los Angeles (Serious Eats)
Five Chiuchow Restaurants in Los Angeles (LA Weekly)
Where To Find Guilin Noodles in Los Angeles (LA Weekly)
Peking Tavern: Northern Chinese Gastropub to Open in DTLA (LA Weekly)
10 Dishes From Happy Garden: Offal, Really Authentic Taiwanese + Shutting Down Soon
What is Authentic Yunnan Food? A Guide From Los Angeles (Serious Eats)
Milk and Honey Opening 2nd Location (LA Weekly)
Boiling Point Grand Opening (LA Weekly)
Cal Fresh Vikon: Buddhist-Style Chicken in the San Gabriel Valley (LA Weekly)
5 Places to Get Peking Duck Today + Happy Peking Duck Day! (LA Weekly)
Limer35′s Birthday Countdown: 41 Hours Of Cake (LA Weekly)
Event Coverage
LuckyRice Festival 2012: Celebrity Chefs, Asian Night Market and a Hawaiian Luau (Village Voice)
A Slice of Taiwan with Food and Booze (Village Voice)
Sound Bites and Celebrity Chefs at LuckyRice’s Grand Feast (Village Voice)
Los Angeles: Snapshots from the Lucky Rice Night Market (Serious Eats)
626 Night Market. Part 2. (LA Weekly)
626 Night Market. Part 3, Preview (LA Weekly)
About Asia
Ultimate Guide to Suzhou (CNNGo)
Free art in Shanghai (BBC)
10 authentic China trips for 2012 (CNNGo)
20 reasons to visit Shanghai in 2012 (CNNGo)
Day Trip Diary- Nanjing (Settling Magazine)
Day Trip Diary- Suzhou (Settling Magazine)
Taiwan: A Food Tour of 5 Night Markets (Serious Eats)
Snapshots from China: The Best Things I Ate in Xiamen [Serious Eats]
Bugging out: 5 extreme foods at Beijing’s night market [CNNGo]
25 Things To Must Eat From Tainan: Taiwan’s Culinary Center [Serious Eats]
This is a Real Taiwanese Breakfast [Serious Eats]
Taiwan: A Food Tour Of 5 Night Markets [Serious Eats]
Asia-America
NYU students ease winter chill, loneliness for Chinese factory workers (USAToday)
Asian American studies programs face an uphill battle as budget cuts loom (USAToday)
Opinion Articles
Clarissa Wei: American-Chinese food is real Chinese food (CNNGo)
An American in disguise in rural China (CNNGo)
Tea Leaves With Megan Lee of AU79
I’ll admit it. AU79 is my favorite boba place of all time — it always has been. I sat down with the owner and we talked about the Ten Ren empire and what makes AU so good. Order the regular green tea with boba — less ice.
Megan Lee comes from a long line of tea experts. Her grandfather was the founder of Ten Ren Tea, Taiwan’s largest tea chain, with locations in seven countries including the United States. But despite being a shareholder in the Ten Ren empire, Lee’s father had a different vision for the company and began his own business, AU 79 Teahouse in 1998.
Today, Lee runs the entire AU 79 Teahouse chain, a bubble tea shop with three locations in the San Gabriel Valley. On weekend evenings, the store is so packed that it’s nearly impossible to snag a seat. But despite the shop’s popularity in the city of Arcadia, Lee notes that the competition between tea houses in the SGV is fierce. She finds herself constantly struggling to appeal to the completely different demographics of customers that pass through her doors on a daily basis.
“When we first started, the crowd was very Chinese, then American-born-Chinese and now Americans,” Lee said.
We caught up with Lee at the Arcadia location to chat about the challenges of running a tea business and the language barriers she and her staff face. The interview was conducted in Chinese. Turn the page for the translation.
5 Questions With Travis Post of Yunnan Kitchen
I interviewed Travis Post of Yunnan Kitchen for Fork in the Road..
This week we shared Yunnan Kitchen’s five best dishes, after reviewing the Lower East Side restaurant. Now meet Travis Post, the executive chef of Yunnan Kitchen, and find out how he was drawn to regional Chinese cooking.
How did you develop an interest for fusion Chinese food?
I was trying to stay away from the word fusion. Because I think what we’re trying to do is replicate the dishes quite straightforwardly. I took Chinese cooking classes when I was 12 or 14. Then just learning more and more about Chinese regional cooking itself kind of spoke to me, especially food from Sichuan and Yunnan.
How would you describe your menu?
Everything is pretty representative of the region. A lot of salads. We have a mint salad that’s very light and refreshing and a shredded chicken salad. There’s a scrambled egg dish that’s pretty specific and unique that uses some flowers and buds. Also mushrooms . There’s a lot of mushroom dishes. There’s tons of wild mushroom along the area.
Why Yunnan?
Erika Chou and I started talking about our interest in the regional cuisines of China and how underrepresented most things were and our passion for the south — for Yunnan and Sichuan. We thought Yunnan food is so specific and beautiful that it deserved a better shot. We thought people would really gravitate towards it.
Did you take a research trip to the region?
We took a trip to China but did not make it down to the region itself because we were pretty time constrained. It’s kind of a remote place. We just didn’t have enough time to get there but we ate at at least two dozen Yunnan restaurants in Beijing and Shanghai. We talked to a lot of great chefs there.
What’s your favorite restaurant in NYC?
I love sitting at the tavern room at Gramercy. It’s always a classic and it never disappoints.
Man Who Has Eaten at 6,000 + Chinese Restaurants; Taiwanese Breakfast Feast
My week in food journalism…
Meet David R. Chan: The Man Who Has Eaten at Over 6,000 Chinese Restaurants (LA WEEKLY) This will probably be one of those articles I’ll look back on in ten years and still be proud of it. I found David on Chowhound (naturally) for some advice on Chinese food. After a couple of back-to-back emails, he sent me his spreadsheet. 6,090 restaurants? I had to write something about it. In fact, I was surprised no one else had pinpointed his genius early on. Chandavkl (his Chowhound handle) is a prolific food forum / social media user. Heck, he’s been on Chowhound since 2000. Since its publication, the story has been re-posted by the Huffington Post, People.com, Eater, The Daily Meal, NYTimes, Yahoo News, Christian Post and Shanghaiist. Though there are a fair number of discrepancies by these re-posters… (c’mon guys..6,090 around the world NOT just in L.A.)… good for David. Seriously. The man is finally getting the recognition he deserves.
A Guide To A Traditional Taiwanese Breakfast (SERIOUS EATS) This was a pretty straightforward guide to a typical Taiwanese breakfast. Food porn central. The owner, January Tsang was kind enough to sit down with me the day after my feast, go through each individual photo, and explain to me how each item is made. I love nice restauranteurs.
6 Great Dim Sum Dishes at Sea Harbour (LA WEEKLY) I sat down with the management at one of the top dim sum places in Los Angeles. Definitely one of the oddest interviews I’ve had in a while. Fancy silverware, Chinese men in suits. He kept on fielding every question I had about the pedigree of their chefs. Still a great experience nevertheless. A taste of HK fine dining I suppose. Shout-out to J, who tagged along and helped me with the translation.
Q&A with Chef Max Hardy on Cooking for the New York Knicks (VILLAGE VOICE) Hardy: “During game days, they burn about 4,000 calories per game. With that, I have to get them different proteins, different starches, and carbs to fuel them back up. So when you think of a plate size, I usually go for for 25 percent starch, 25 percent vegetables, and about 50 percent protein. So it can range from a 12-ounce to a 24-ounce steak. It just varies day to day.”
My interview with Michellin-starred Chef Ho Chee Boon of Hakkasan New York
I interviewed Chef Ho Chee Boon, the executive chef of Hakkasan New York, who talked about his 24 years of experience at several of the world’s most renowned Asian restaurants. Ho is a pioneer in Chinese haute cuisine and is currently working on expanding the Hakkasan brand in the United States.
My favorite part of the interview: “Everyone’s preferences from all the regions of the world is different. In Asia, especially in Hong Kong, the people prefer traditional Cantonese food. They prefer much lighter flavors as opposed to people here in America who prefer heavier tones. When I was in Dubai, I realized they liked foods that are heavy in spices.”
This seems to be a trend with the Chinese chefs I’ve interviewed – from Suzie’s on Bleecker to solid Chinese restaurants in the SGV. The bottom line has been Americans prefer saucier and heavier foods, and restaurants will accommodate accordingly to those preferences.
My goal is to find Chinese restaurants who stick to the traditions of their province.
This was my first interview conducted completely in Chinese. Check it out here.
