When I spoke with Chan Yan Tak, he was the chef of Lung King Heen at Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong, where he became the first Chinese chef in the world to hold three Michelin stars.
Chan speaks to the apprenticeship that begins for the most practical of reasons, and to what a chef who came through the hard way chooses to build afterward. He did not enter the kitchen out of vocation. His father died when he was 13, and as the eldest son the responsibility for supporting the family, financially and emotionally, fell to him. Being a chef was a rational choice because the job came with free accommodation and meals for staff. Life as a junior chef was about endurance and patience. The second subject follows from the first. Chinese kitchens, in his telling, have historically carried more shouting than affirmation. Because he experienced that himself, he set out to run a restaurant where staff feel respected and happy at work. The team eats late night suppers together, turnover is very low, and some of his colleagues have worked with him for 30 years.
“Because I experienced it the hard way, I want my staff to feel respected and happy at work.” Chan Yan Tak, chef, Lung King Heen at Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong
In the book, Chan Yan Tak appears in Chapter 2, The Apprenticeship, twice. The first appearance is his account of why he became a cook at all, which the chapter places among the apprenticeships that began for pragmatic reasons rather than from a calling. The second comes where the chapter turns to the traditional kitchen, built on the premise that an apprentice can only be sharpened by friction. Some of the people in this book grew up inside that culture and rejected it. Chan is the example of someone who decided early to build something different, and whose restaurant shows what that decision produces over decades.
On the choice he made as a boy, he was unsentimental.
“Back in those days, becoming a chef was more pragmatic than following a passion.” Chan Yan Tak, chef, Lung King Heen at Four Seasons Hotel Hong Kong