Way of the wok: Hong Kong Michelin star chef Jayson Tang follows in the footsteps of a master
- Raising Cantonese cuisine to new levels of fine dining, young chef pays tribute to mentor Paul Lau
- The boy who preferred sushi now celebrates his Cantonese food heritage, giving it a modern twist
Jayson Tang developed an interest in picking up a wok and ladle at a young age, as his family ran a Hong Kong street food stall, a dai pai dong.
“When I was just five or six years old, I would turn on the kitchen stoves at home to cook in secret,” he recalled with a laugh. “One day, my mother found out. She was so shocked.”
Even his favourite Japanese comics, Oh! My Konbu, was a manga series about a cook’s son who helped his father in culinary adventures.
No surprise, then, that at 36, Tang is one of Hong Kong’s youngest Michelin-starred Cantonese chefs.
As Chinese executive chef at JW Marriott Hotel Hong Kong, he led a 40-strong team at its Man Ho Chinese Restaurant to win one star in the Michelin Guide last year and retained it this year.
But it has been a long journey to the top. His early interest in cooking took him to the Chinese Culinary Institute, the “Shaolin Temple” of Chinese cooking in Hong Kong, and then through years of apprenticeships.
He took a demotion, it paid off
Cantonese cuisine received global recognition for fine dining in 2009, when Lung King Heen at the Four Seasons Hong Kong became the first Chinese restaurant in the world to receive three Michelin stars.
Chinese kitchens at the time suffered from a reputation of being dirty, old-fashioned and labour-intensive, putting off young Hongkongers from taking up jobs in the sector.
Many who tried did not survive their arduous apprenticeships, working from morning to midnight, cleaning vegetables and preparing meat and seafood, chopping and slicing endlessly, mastering the art of wrapping delicate dim sum and spending hours at hot woks over blazing stoves.
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The institute’s programmes drew fewer applicants than courses at the International Culinary Institute that taught how to make other cuisines.
Tang recalled that, as a child, he found it boring to go to Chinese restaurants, as his father always ordered the same dim sum items.
“I preferred sushi,” he said.
But Tang’s views on cuisine have changed with time, helping him to appreciate the food of home.
“I can’t see why local culinary art has received little recognition compared with Western cuisines,” he said. “As a Chinese, I feel I should do something for the culture, to promote it and bring new elements to the craft.”
He had many teachers along the way, but a turning point arrived when he started learning under his culinary hero, grandmaster Paul Lau Ping-lui.
“He was like a legend, forever an idol in my heart,” Tang said.
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Lau was famous as the chef who arrived in Hong Kong from Guangzhou at 14, and worked his way up from washing toilets and doing the most menial tasks, to mastering Cantonese cuisine like few others.
Over 40 years, he was frequently in the news, helming restaurant kitchens and winning Chinese cooking competitions.
In 2011, Lau joined the Ritz-Carlton Hong Kong’s new Tin Lung Heen restaurant.
When Tang heard the news, he was determined to get into his hero’s new kitchen.
At the time, he was working at another hotel as “second wok”, or sous chef. In the typical Chinese kitchen hierarchy, there is a line of five to nine chefs, with the head chef being the “first wok” who cooks only the most high-end dishes.
To join Lau, Tang was effectively demoted to “wok five” at Tin Lung Heen. He grabbed the chance, moved there that year, and never looked back.
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There was plenty to watch and learn.
“I would observe how hot he heated his wok before adding the oil, and contemplate why he put in this amount of oil, not more. What result did he want to achieve?” Tang recalled.
“In the end, you know how to communicate with your food and woks. Just by paying attention to the sizzling sound of the oil, you know how well the food is done.”
Tang spent five years at Lau’s side.
The restaurant was awarded its first Michelin star in 2012, then two stars the following year and every year after that. It is one of only three Cantonese restaurants in the city with two stars.
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‘I share what I know’
Lau, now 60 and still helming Tin Lung Heen, said his own apprenticeship in his teenage years was a world apart.
“The teachers would not teach you or explain why they did things a certain way, so I learned by observing,” said Lau.
He slept little and practised cooking secretly at night, using the day’s leftovers, when everyone else was gone.
As a teacher with many disciples, Lau did not worry about the Chinese martial arts saying, “when students master the knowledge, the teacher loses his job.”
It meant a master would hold back on sharing his best skills to avoid being overtaken by his students.
“I share what I know with them,” he said.
Tang said Lau was an open-minded mentor who led by example and had his own way of passing on his skills.
“He would chit-chat with me while I was nervously concentrating on tossing the wok. In the end, I understood it was his way of training me to multitask and cook by instinct,” Tang said.
In 2016, he landed the plum post of Chinese executive chef at Man Ho, aged just 30.
His Michelin star arrived five years later.
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He is also one of the youngest chefs named in the Chinese Omakase 2.0, under the 2022 Hong Kong Wine & Dine Festival held by the Hong Kong Tourism Board last month.
For his menu, Tang redesigned two traditional dishes from the famous Manchu-Han Imperial Feast as a tribute to master Lau.
These were a pan-fried French deer fillet and softshell turtle with olive and mandarin peel sauce, and braised dried South African abalone with dried giant grouper skin.
“Without master Lau’s teaching, I would never have achieved what I have today,” Tang said.
Lau said he was pleased with his protégé.
“I am glad that he has made a name of his own,” he said. “It is through all our hard work that Cantonese cuisine can improve, be elevated and gain more recognition.”
