My mother and grandmother were good cooks. When I was a child, my family had financial difficulties, so just being able to eat made us happy. We ate family-style dishes like braised pork. I still like eating it today.
Back then, it was most important to earn more money. The better you were, the faster you moved to another job, so I knew I needed to learn more to earn more money.
I liked cooking at the time, though I didn't have enough strength to hold a wok. Some young cooks bought a wok and practised holding it at home. I only practised in the kitchen.
Cooking Chinese food is like practising kung fu – you need to learn the hard way.
Willing to learn
If you teach young cooks now, they don't always want to learn. During our time, it wasn't like that – if you were hard-working, then the master chef would teach you something. He wouldn't always teach all of us apprentices. If we were willing to learn, he let us copy his recipes by hand – no photocopying. That was his sign of affection towards us.
The stir-fry chefs were tough. If you made beef dry-fried rice noodles and didn't do it right, they would dump what you made on the table. Today, we don't do that – we talk to the young chefs nicely to encourage them to improve.
One person alone cannot create a dish. Before, it wasn't common to use Western ingredients in Chinese cuisine. Now, we use Australian Wagyu beef. We got some from the Regent Hong Kong Hotel's Western restaurant to experiment with, and we thought it tasted good.
The beef's texture is tender, and we wok-fry it with peppercorns. We also use Japanese pork from Kagoshima, wok-fried with eggplant and garlic.
Cooking and life
Diners have different tastes these days. Some people say they want to eat healthy dishes, but they order food that isn't so healthy! A few years ago, we worked with an expert to offer a healthy menu, but diners didn't really order anything from it!
Nevertheless, our aim is to give diners quite healthy dishes because I like to eat healthily, too. Our double-boiled soups are very aromatic but don't have any oil. I don't like to see any oil in them.
I used to do Thai kickboxing when I was younger. What I like about boxing is that it's like life: once you go into the ring, no one can help you – it's just you and your hands. If you aren't careful, you will get hit, so you need to practise a lot, which is like cooking and life.
If you don't try to improve, then you won't be able to compete. I have to think of new dishes but I must also be consistent. Our restaurant has been around for a long time, and I trust our team to do well.
Fun facts
The chef is in charge of everything about the food in a restaurant. He is responsible for buying the food, hiring the kitchen staff, creating the menus, and deciding the recipes.
Quick questions
- What dish does Lau Yiu-fai remember from his childhood?
- What happened in the past when young chefs made mistakes?
- How is cooking Chinese food like practising kung fu?
