Eat My Globe

Interview with Award-Winning Chef,

Ming Tsai

INTRO MUSIC

Simon Majumdar (“SM”):

Hi everybody, I'm Simon Majumdar and welcome to Eat My Globe, a podcast about things you didn't know you didn't know about food. And on today's very special episode, we have lucky enough to join us one of my greatest pals from PBS and the Food Network. He's a chef who's won a James Beard award, whose cooking shows have won him an Emmy Award. In fact, he has very kindly invited me on one of his shows, “Simply Ming,” where we cooked one of my favorite dishes of all time, a very British Chicken Tikka Masala.

He has written many cookbooks that have been included in the top cookbook lists, opened restaurants to wide acclaim. I've also judged him on “The Next Iron Chef,” and have then since shared many judging panels with him on various shows. And now, of course, he is an “Iron Chef” himself.

On one great occasion that our travel schedules aligned while in London, I got to spend time with him and his lovely family and took him to one of my favorite fish and chip shops, Masters Superfish, where we all piled into one of the best Chippy suppers on the planet. That was so much fun. And finally, one fact about our next guest is not only is he a wonderful chef, author, business person and philanthropist, but he has also been named as People Magazine's 50 Most Beautiful People in the World. And indeed he is. Beautiful inside and out. So, it is my very, very great pleasure to introduce you to my friend, and the one and only Mr. Ming Tsai.

Why don't you tell us what you're doing right now? I know you used to be busy with Ming's Bings, but tell us. . .

MT:

Yes.

SM:

. . . about why you've had to stop doing that for a while. . .

MT:

Yeah.

SM:

. . . and without obviously causing any pain to your wife or anything else about. . .

MT:

Sure.

SM:

. . . what she's doing. Because I understand that with my, you know, my own cancer.

MT:

Yeah, Simon, you've been an inspiration to a lot of us chefs. I see you working so hard during Tournament of Champions and you've, yeah, you, you're just an inspiration, dude. You went through crazy illness with what's been going on with your brain and it didn't slow you down. You just said like, okay, this stinks. This is a bump in the road. Let me do what the doctor says I need to do. And you do X, Y, and Z. And it was a huge bump in the road, but you just bounced back like, okay, well that stunk, but I'm back. And that's an inspiring story, Simon, because a lot of people would give up. A lot of people start feeling sorry for themselves, and oh my God, I did this, why me, why me? You never said why me, you just said I gotta just do it. And did it.

SM:

Well, I've got my lovely wife who tells me to stop saying why me.

MT:

Right.

SM:

So. . . and she's been the one who's been in charge of everything. So, I don't blame it on me, but I do think, without her, I wouldn't be doing this.

MT:

Well, and I think life partner is paramount. Great when things are going great, but really great when things aren't going great.

SM:

Yeah, absolutely.

MT:

You need that life partner. And so to. . . . As we were discussing Ming's Bings, you know, startup for four years, as you can imagine, every startup is really tough.

SM:

I know.

MT:

You got to be everywhere, right? It's Ming's Bings, I'm Ming. So, I had to be at every. . . every demo, all the grocery stores. . .

SM:

I remember.

MT:

. . . and the Costco's and whatnot. And I was traveling all the time plus to the factory. And unfortunately, my wife has had some health issues and it came back this year with a vengeance. And she survived, she got through it and she was on the mend. But after two to three months of, after this happened in the winter, she was not recovering the speed that she needed to. She needed to get her strength back, her weight back, all that stuff. And there's not a better person on this planet, humbly, than me to feed my wife, right? I mean, this is what I do. I cook.

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

And so I had to make a really difficult choice to, you know, as you would do the same family first, wife first over business, over anything. And, you know, my, my biggest lesson that I learned there is make sure you partner with the right people. Make sure people that are your investors are, really people that you would trust that you want to invest into them as well. Because when, very proudly when I explained to my cap table that, guys, I need to pull out, I'm sorry, I know you've given me money and believed in me, but this is what I need to do. Every single one's like, do exactly that, you have to do that, we want you to do that, good luck. And that, that spoke volumes to the commitment. . .

SM:

Oh.

MT:

. . . and the true friendships that I had with the cap table. And, and so it is. . . . You can always get money, but there's good money and then there's not good money. And, I do think it's so important for anyone doing a new business, get good money. It's so important.

SM:

Oh well, I. . . . From all of the people here on Eat My Globe, and we want to give you and your wife, uh, good heal. . . good words.

MT:

Thank you.

SM:

And we want to say, you know, we hope she recovers and you recover and everyone goes through it really well. So please, please. . . .

MT:

Thank you, and she's on, like you, she's on the mend. She's better, she had clear scans just recently. So. Or, or, I know I did the right thing, and I know she's going to get, get through this, and we're gonna continue on enjoying this globe we live in.

SM:

I'm so happy to know about her health.

Let’s go into the past shall we, since we're a history show.

MT:

Please.

SM:

So, you were. . . . Tell me if I'm right with this and I hope I got it right. You were raised in Dayton, Ohio, is that correct? And tell us about...

MT:

That is. . .  I was born in Newport Beach but raised in Dayton eighteen years. Culinary capital of the world, Simon.

[Laughter]

SM:

Well, I, you know, I, I love actually Dayton, Ohio. I love all the bits of Ohio.

MT:

Yep.

SM:

I've traveled to so many of them and I actually find the people there really friendly and really, you know. . . . So, from that point of view, I think they're really good people.

MT:

It was the best place on earth for me to grow up, right? This is. . . . You didn't lock the doors. Exactly, the Midwest mentality. Everyone is your neighbor. Everyone is friendly. It was a wonderful place to belong. And, you know, my brother and I were the only two non-white people in the entire school, right? We're two Asians, there are no African Americans. Just us two. But no one treated us any differently. We were just two kids that liked to play tag. I always joke that when we had the three or four families, Chinese families, over to our house, we were Chinatown. That was it. That was the entire population of Chinese in Dayton, Ohio.

[Laughter]

So, I. . . . so, honestly, fantastic place to go. My dad was chief scientist at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. So that's how we ended up in Dayton. And it's a great place to come from for bringing up children and for getting your value system and, you know, take care of your neighbor, that's, Dayton was fantastic.

SM:

And I was going to talk about your father because he was a rocket scientist.

MT:  

He still is. My dad is 95 years old, Simon. He is like you, an inspiration. He's, he's ridiculous. At 95, he works full-time. Still.

SM:

What?

MT:

He is currently, as we speak, in Asia for a month trip to five different countries, seven cities, 12 meetings. He has a new patent called double double. He has a new way of designing a fuselage. Cheaper, faster, stronger. So that's it. So of course he talks to SpaceX, and he talks to Ferrari, and he talks to Airbus, and he talks to Callaway and Toray, the largest graphite golf [indecipherable] in Tokyo. And at 95, he has a ski pole. He zooms through the airports. He is self-sufficient. Just unbelievable.

SM:

Wow.

MT:

And literally works full time today. It's just something that is just, I've never seen it before.

SM:

But it. . . . And I will talk about this because at the same time was it your mother who was running the Mandarin Kitchen?

MT:

Yep, exactly. So, in Dayton. So.

SM:

And how did that help in. . . . I mean. . . . Well, you tell us about that because didn't you go to Yale and all these fantastic places. . .

MT:

Yeah, that’s. . .

SM:

. . . and then you ended up doing cooking?

MT:

Exactly. So I was a good Chinese son, I think I still am, and which was, I had to be a doctor, lawyer, engineer growing up, right? That's just, that's it. That was the only choice. And by the way, the other rules growing up was so, doctor, lawyer, engineer, get any grades you want as long as they're straight A's.

SM:

[Laughter]

MT:

And marry anyone you want. We prefer Chinese. So, Simon, I'm 0 for 3. I did none of the above.

SM:

[Laughter]

MT:

Although my awesome wife Polly does speak fluent Chinese, so I think that got her in good graces, plus she's just an awesome person. And my parents, my mom's in heaven now, but they both used to make fun of me that her Chinese accent was better than mine. I'm like, say what? What are you talking about? She's from Dayton, and funny enough, you don't know this, but Polly was born in Dayton, Ohio. Polly was born literally a par three from where I lived, and we never met there. It's just a really crazy story.

I met Polly because eventually one of her brothers, David Talbot, who is also in heaven, was my squash coach at Yale. And he had Polly visit once. She was at CU Boulder studying Chinese, learning to speak Chinese. Just random, nothing to do with me. She just wanted smaller classes. She had CU Boulder. And as another ironic happenstance, ended up rooming with Ivan Orkin, who of course is the ramen king, Ivan Ramen. So.

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

They were great friends in college. Of course, now we're all great friends because Ivan's one of the best ramen chefs in the world. And because he wanted to study Japanese. So that's how they met at a Greenpeace rally. Anyway, so that's David. So now, back to my mom. She opens up the Mandarin Kitchen, which is a great little Chinese restaurant, really focused on lunch. This is in the Dayton Arcade downtown. And my dad being the engineer, he actually created batch cooking, which is what Chipotle and everyone else does now.

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

Because a classic Chinese restaurant, if you order a sweet and sour pork, you make it, it's served. That's fine if it's a sit-down restaurant, but this is a take out fast food to 200 people in an hour. We could never do it. So, we did batch cooking, which was literally we would have the pork and the beef and the chicken and the sauces separate. So, you get a sweet and sour or spicy or mala, whatever it is.

SM:

Yeah, yeah.

MT:

You want it on rice, you want it noodles, it's batch cooking. It's what Chipotle's does. So he. . . . I wish he patented that. I wish all my. . .  I wish all the sites patented what they did.

SM:

[Laughter]

MT:

And, so, my dad was involved because thinking as an engineer, but it really was my mom's gift. So, I was 14, 15, 16. I was the manager at 14 because I was the son. She could trust me with money. I was the dishwasher. I was the rice cooker. I was the egg roll cart boy. We literally had an egg roll cart that my dad designed with this welder that cost $5,000 to build. Beautiful Stanley steel cart. Simon, back then a car, a Ford Fairmont was $5,000. We're talking about a lot of money for an Egg Roll Cart. You know?

SM:

What happened to this... What happened to this cart? I would love to keep that.

MT:

Well, she sold the restaurant, the cart went with the restaurant. I wish I, you're so right, I wish I could get that cart back. It was beautiful. It had a propane tank and a hot sink and you know, OSHA standard, everything. But that job was paramount for me because that's when I got the restaurant bug. You can serve delicious food with a smile and a good value. You're gonna get customers back. And that bug is like, wow, I can make people happy through food. This is a job that one, I like to do it, I'm actually pretty good at, and two, what a great job. You can make people happy every day. I want this job.

SM:

I know because well we'll talk about your restaurants in a short while but I've been to both of well. . .  Yeah Blue Ginger and Blue Dragon. . .

MT:

Yep.

SM:

. . . and they were both fantastic.

MT:

Thank you.

SM:

And I want to talk about that because you gave me one of the great experiences apart from meeting with you. And I have a picture here I want to show you this picture which is a really. . .

MT:

Okay. I'm scared, Simon.

SM:

No, do you remember this picture?

MT:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah, with Jacques. That's at Blue Dragon.

SM:

I was invited for a meal and there's a picture of Ming and Jacques Pépin. And Jacques Pépin is wearing my hat. And so, I was so pleased. He wore my hat, but I didn't give it to him because that hat's too important.

MT:

You know, I was gonna say you should, because he gave me a bow tie once. I was at an event, I've known Jacques almost my entire career, and he's. . .

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

. . . just hats off to Jacques. Jacques is, first of all, for the record, he's one of the most talented chefs in the world.

SM:

Oh, absolutely.

MT:

I mean, anything from charcuterie to making croissants to soufflés, to any technique. Jacques knows. His knife skills are as good as Morimoto's knife skills, right? I mean, he's...

SM:

I've seen it.

MT:

. . . unbelievable tactician. He's crazy good. Everything. I mean, everything he can do. And the most prolific artist. Have you seen his menus? Right? He makes menus. I type in menu seven courses. Great. He hand calligraphies his menu and then draws pictures of each one of his courses in multicolored pencils. Jesus. Jacques Pépin does. He literally is. And above all of that, like my father, one of the most humble men in the world. Right? He is such a. . . just to emulate, if you can, any chef that can emulate Jacques Pépin, you are golden. If you could be anything close to Jacques, in the way he deals with people, the way he deals with himself in the world, the way he makes people happy with food, just his way. When you're in the room with Jacques, he makes you feel like a million bucks that you're important and he cares. And, and I will say this. I'm very proudly cooking with him again. We're doing, he's doing 90 dinners for his 90th birthday for the Jacques Pépin Foundation. Danny Meyer just did the first one I just saw in New York and we're all doing it. So, I'm doing one with Jeremy Sewall and Michael Schlow and Ken Oringer, right? Jamie Mammano, a great Boston chef and we're doing this all across the country. So, Google Jacques Pépin dinners, cause we're gonna be, they're gonna be in a city, 90 cities around the country. So, try to check it out. And just in case you don't know what he does, he's providing scholarships for people that can't afford to go to cooking school and learn the metier that we got to learn. It's changed, right? Back in the day, we would apprentice, it'd be for free. We'd work in France, we'd work in Japan, whatever. It's not like that anymore, right? Now, you can't work for free in America because of insurance, right? You cannot be a free, even if you want to work for free, it's not allowed because if you hurt yourself. And, you know, it's just a different way of doing it. Now you have these fantastic chef schools that definitely give you a base training, but they're expensive. So the Jacques Pépin Foundation really is, is really planning for a much more tasty America in the future. Because without chefs, you're not gonna have a tasty America.

SM:

No, absolutely. I, after you introduced me to him, and I'd never met him before, I actually did one of these podcasts with him. And we lasted nearly two hours of him just telling me about his time in France. . .

MT:

That's the best.

SM:

. . .his time in the army, all of this stuff. And it was just spectacular. I know this is supposed to be about you, but we all have. . . .

MT:                                                         

Yeah, I can talk about Jacques all day long, so that's easy.

SM:

Oh no. He's a great person. And for anyone who doesn't know him, he used to be with Julia Child on TV.

MT:

Yep.

SM:

And when you go and have chance, go and see him on Julia Child. Listen to my podcast with him. He's fantastic. But now back to. . . .

MT:

Wait, hang on. Did he tell you the tête de veau? Did he tell you the tête de veau story when he was a young chef in New York?

SM:

No, go on, tell me that before we... No, tell me. Yeah.

MT:

He's with his French buddy. He wanted to make tête de veau. Tête de veau, for those who don't know, basically all the parts of the head of the pig, and you make. . . and you cook and you make a beautiful tête de veau, a pâté.

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

And he wanted to make it. So, he asked for a couple heads, and it showed up to his apartment. But it was all full of hair, and he never. . . In France, you would get it prepped you still have to go in and boil it. . .

SM:

Yeah, yeah.

MT:

. . . and get everything out of it but it didn't have all that hair and everything on it so you didn't know what to do. So they tried to burn it and break it down they made a complete bloody mess and true story apparently late at night they're like what are gonna do with these two masses. They dump it in the Hudson. They dumped these two bloody ridiculous heads and in the next day it made the newspaper that some religious cult. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

MT:

. . . did some satanical thing on these, we can't describe what the animals were, and they're like, oh mon dieu, that was us. So that was Jacques.

SM:

[Laughter]

MT:

Jacques would do, he's just unbelievable. Anyway.

SM:

You know even at 90 something he's always on YouTube but he's cooking and it's just everything about him. I always, you know, whenever I see him on YouTube I'll go and look at it because everything he does. I'm just watching his knife skills, but anyway.

MT:

Yeah.

SM:

Now. We've talked about Jacques and please, please listen to my podcast. Go to one of these dinners, everything you can, because it's going to be amazing.

But before we go there, you were at Yale. You were trained to be a mechanical engineer. So, the first thing I wanted, is there anything about being a mechanical engineer and a chef that you kind of went...

Well, there's some similarity between them. There's something that I use. . .

MT:

Yep.

SM:

. . . in Chef-dom that I, you know, I used when I was a mechanical engineer.

MT:

Yeah, no, mean, believe it or not, there is crossover. First and foremost, learning engineering is just problem solving, right? You got 12 variables, you need the 13th answer, so change your mind how to solve problems. So, I think that's a great. Just math, physics, I think that's great to train your mind. When you start running a business, you need to learn how to read spreadsheets. And that's one thing that engineering did teach you. How you make your formulas to do spreadsheets. Because there's so many great chefs in this country, in this world, but if they can't read a spreadsheet, they can't read a P & L. They don't know if they're making money or not. And that's really one of the, I think, just obvious reasons places go out of business. Because you could have the most talented chef in the world, but they can't keep their expenses and everything in line, you're in trouble. So analytically thinking, I think, helps running businesses.

Also, the basics of physics, you know, PV equals nRT, pressure and temperature and time, all of that is cooking. That's baking. That's that's, that's sauteing. That's all physics. And it really came into play, I guess, eight, nine years ago, when I started designing food equipment for HSN. So, I was on HSN, as you know, for six years. . .

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

. . . before all the way before COVID. And using actually PV equals nRT, a new pressure cooker, a rotating cooker, an air fryer, because it's a flow of energy. So, let’s make a more of a tornado. All of those things started applying and my dad was even, I won’t say he was impressed, but he was. . .

SM:

[Laughter]

MT:

. . . psyched to see I was using some of my Yale degree.

[Laughter]

SM:

[Laughter]

MT:

I was not inventing any airplane or anything, right? But I do think training the mind is so important, regardless of what you do. I mean, look, basically every Wall Street firm rather hire an MIT engineer than any other type of student, right? They want people that can analytically think.

SM:

No, I couldn't believe that. I'm lucky that my amazing wife is so great with spreadsheets. She was a lawyer and all of that. And so she does that. And to be honest, I'm not good at it. I was a very creative person with publishing and all of that. So. But I have her on the other side. She’s just great at doing that. But I think when you, you were at Yale, didn't you start going to Le Cordon Bleu? Where was that?

MT:

I did, yeah. I'll tell you a great. . . . So, freshman year, one of my dad's partners, his company's called Think Composite, Tiffy Massard lived in Paris, so he ran Europe for my dad. So, I luckily, through my dad, became an employee and got a Carte de Séjour so I could work in France as an engineer. But I took that paper to then work in France as a cook, because it was impossible to get papers. Carte de Séjour, for me, to replace a French cook, because you have to be like. . . . How does, how's he  a better cook than all the other cooks we have in France? I'm not. But an engineering of graphite, that's how that works. Anyway. So, every summer, I started going to France. Cordon Bleu my junior year, and that's when I discovered, holy, the French can cook too. Because up until that, I only knew Chinese technique, right? Wok stirring, and steaming, and frying, and I knew nothing about pastries and desserts, because Chinese cuisine, we don't really have it, right? We just never had milk for hundreds and hundreds of years.

SM:

Of course, of course.

MT:

And, and I started at Cordon Bleu, I'm like, wow, this is creme patissiere, this is you make pastry cream, this is creme anglaise. I didn't know creme anglaise was the base for every ice cream in the world. I mean, this is like revelatory that a creme anglaise, creme anglaise, you can make ice cream.

SM:

As it happens, of course, as the name suggests, it comes from England.

MT:

I understand. I know I had a big argument with a CIA grad once who was arguing you got to make crème anglaise with cream. I'm like that's the reason it was created is you couldn't, people couldn't afford cream so they would make crème anglaise with milk with eggs and that's the creation of it. So using cream is like cheating and it's a lot easier to make crème anglaise with cream by the way. In any case, after junior year, I realized that I want to make Frenese cuisine. That name didn't stick thank God. French Chinese. I wanted to blend. I'm like, these are the two best cuisines in the world. Yes, the Italian and Japanese chefs will argue all day long, but they're the two oldest. Western. . . .

SM:

Uh.. . . what about no, no, no, hold on. What about Indian cooking. . . .

MT: 

Or Indian and. . . Okay.

SM:

Which is with Persian and Indian and mixed together you. . . Okay, so let's. . . .

MT:

Yep. Although, and you're a historian, although the first recorded food item was a bowl of noodles in China, and they could tell that it was a chicken broth base. It was covered by a volcano, by molten lava, and was petrified. Literally, I mean, not scared, but petrified.

SM:

[Laughter]

MT:

And they rediscovered this, and he was also scared, I'm sure, but... And that predated any other possible food anywhere in the world. So, I'll get you that tidbit. That was thousands of years ago. But to your point, and for me, Chinese and French are the two royal cuisines as I call them. . .

SM:

No, no, of course.

MT:

. . . because they're the ones I know. So, I'm like, I'm gonna do Frenese cuisine. I came back junior year. I sat my parents down. Again, my dad's a rocket scientist and my mom, if you've seen my shows, she was a mostly brilliant, awesome, just cookin' mom and just full of life.

SM:

No, I've seen her. I've seen her.

MT:

So, I'm like, guys, listen, I wanna, yeah, you met, right? Have you met my mom?

SM:

No, I didn't meet her, but I've seen her.

MT:

I don't know if you've ever met. Yeah, I guess you have. Yeah, she's a mate. And so, I sat him down, and I remember distinctly, we're at a dinner table. I'm like, guys, listen, I don't wanna be an engineer. And it wasn't a shock, right? They knew I was in Paris cooking and all this. I am gonna finish the degree, because you gotta get your Bachelor's, you’ve spent all this money at Yale. So don't worry, I'm gonna graduate.

But the next week after graduation, I want to move to Paris and I want to cook. And my mom got up, gave me a big hug, says, you're so lucky at your young age. You already know your passion. Promise you have 110%. We wholly support you. Now keep in mind, these are Chinese parents born in Beijing. So, they're traditional.

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

They could have been traditional Chinese parents. Just like, I can't believe you're going to cook. And for the record, for those that don't know the history, when Chinese first came to this country, we built railroads, right? We literally all men only. . .

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

. . . came to build all the railroads. And that was a gold rush. Still only men.

SM:

From San Francisco.

MT:

And then there was nothing left to do. So, Chinatown, the only met in the 80s Chinese men could do because they couldn't speak English was cook, right? And yes, there's some laundromats too, but mostly cook and that's that was a creation of Chinatown in San Francisco. So, here I am. . .

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

. . . going to Andover, Yale, Cornell all this great education. I want to go cook. So, I'm really going to ask backwards everything possible, but the best way to say my parents are just cool. They were both schooled in America. So, they weren't the traditional, traditional Chinese parents that, thank God, because they would not allow me to do what I did. So, my mom gives me hug. My dad, again, the rocket scientist, his son, you weren't gonna be a very good engineer anyway. Go cook.

[Laughter]

SM:

[Laughter]

MT:

Like, wow, dad, that's rough. But he's like, he's so right. If you don't love what you do, you have no chance of being good at it. Forget about great at it. You will never be good at it. So, they knew that. And I do very happily translate to my children, I want them to do what makes them happy. Because that's the most important thing. It's not what I want them to do, it's what they want to do. And that's, that’s the best way to parent as far as I know, as long as they don't do something really stupid. Like cook.

[Laughter]

SM:

My father was the same, an Indian. When he was in India, he was a doctor, or he comes from a line of doctors going back 500 years and 600 years. And he had to be, but all our family, he said, whatever you want to do, you do. Whatever you want to do.

You work though, this is fantastic. Because you worked for Pierre Hermé and you worked for Sushi Master Kobayashi, so I mean all the chefs that you worked with when you're in Paris, when you're in Japan, when you. . . . You must have had. . . . I never met any of these people. And these were, you know, you're younger than me and I just wanted to know what it was like to meet these incredible chefs.

MT:

Yeah.

SM:

Because I never, I sometimes ate in the restaurants but never met them.

MT:

Pierre Hermé, yeah. I mean, Pierre Hermé still today reputed to be the best pastry. . .

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

. . . chef in the world, right? I mean. . .

SM:

Yeah, of course. Yeah.

MT:

. . . yes, Hermé’s all over France and Japan. . .

SM:

And in London and in...

MT:

. . . and he was the youngest executive pastry chef. Yeah, he's heavy, he's all over. He was the youngest executive pastry chef. . .

SM:

Yes.

MT:

. . . ever at Fauchon, like at 27. And Fauchon, if you don't know, unfortunately COVID closed it, was the best pastry house in Paris at Place Madeline for...

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

Actually, I was there for their 200th anniversary. I was working there at the time, the celebration. That was. . . I've never seen so much caviar in my life.

SM:

Oh.

MT:

I mean, that celebration. It’s foie gras terrine. Simon, you would have had a. . . . We cooked for 24 hours, literally, for that party. Everyone was there, the president and fans, mean, everyone was there.

SM:

Well, that sounds like the party I need to be at.

MT:

Yeah, yeah, you could. So, Pierre, Pierre was just a master of everything pastries. I mean, all his cakes and his croissants, its quite. . . . I learned, the one thing I learned from Pierre Hermé is it's either perfect or it's not. Example, we had a five-deck oven, pain au chocolat, chausson aux pommes, croissant, all these beautiful breakfast pastries. Their croissants were this big, they were 10 francs a pop. Back then, Paris, was five francs for a regular croissant, Fauchon was double, and it was worth every penny. They were the most perfect croissant.

SM:

I’ve eaten them.

MT:

Right? And they used to have something called en boite, a box. So, by the oven there was a box. And when they came out, if there was a nick, a little piece of flake that was off of it, en boite. They wouldn't sell it. It would get into the box. So, we ate fresh, warm croissants and chausson. And the rule of Fourchon is you eat as much as you want of everything. Because within three weeks you don't start sneaking chocolate, you're just done. And America's like, you can't eat anything. And what does everyone do? They sneak around and eat the beef tenderloin, right? So, he was much smarter.

But it was just perfection. So, the croissant had a little mark in the box and that's how he did everything in his shop. And that was something like, wow, that's like 10 croissants wasted, but 90 croissants perfect. And hence they were $10 each.

I have a great story. He was, I came in at 4.30, 5 a.m., the normal time to come in in the morning and there's 20 of us pastry cooks, right? I'm the lowest on the totem pole. And he was already there. And he's over the Cuisar, which is this big copper 220 volt contraption, all copper, you make ganache, you make all your, all your sauces, and he's sweating over it, and there's this liquid puree thing, and he's swearing at it. [Indecipherable] This is making me so pissed off. And I'm like, chef.

SM:

[Laughter]

MT:

And you know, you don't speak to the chef very often, right? You just like bonjour, chef. Au revoir, chef. That's it. Unless he asks you a question, you don't be like, how was your day, how was your weekend? You don't do that with chefs in France. If they spoke to you, you responded. But I did ask him, like, you know, Chef [speaking in French]. What is this? He goes, I put that in the pentad. It's this stupid pumpkin. And he took fresh pumpkin and was cooking it. And when you cook fresh pumpkin, it separates. You get all the water and then you get this nasty puree. He was commissioned to make 20 pumpkin pies. U.S. Embassy. At a very good price per pie, probably 100 bucks a pie, but he had to make a pumpkin puree. And he'd never done it before, and he's trying to do it, and it wouldn't work. It’s just . . You can't do it. And I, I'm the lowest on the totem pole. I'm like, chef, peut-être, maybe, I can get you penta puree en boite. I can get you pumpkin puree in a can. He's like, that exists? Oui.

SM:

[Laughter]

MT:

Can you do that? So, I call my dad, who again, US Air Force. Had access to the PX, which is right at. . . close to Place Maryland, the US Embassy. I walked in there because of connection to my father's. I came back with two, three cases of Libby's pumpkin puree, right?

SM:

[Laughter]

MT:

And I walk in, I am the proudest cook ever. He opens up a can, he tries it, he goes, hey, not bad, it's pretty good. They say [speaks in French] what's the recipe? And I show them the Libby's can and I said, let's hear it. Condensed milk, eggs, puree. And he actually used that recipe off of the Libby's can and put it in a beautiful crust, a full-shorn crust, charged 100 bucks a pie. I was a hero for a day. So anyway.

SM:

Awww.

MT:

And I got to see him recently. I'm so psyched. I saw him. I was so humbled that during Blue Ginger's reign, so maybe 10, 12 years ago, I get a phone call from the host, like, hey, just so know, Chef Pierre Hermé’s coming in for dinner. I'm like, excuse me? I'm like, Pierre who?

He goes, yeah, Pierre Hermé, he's at Harvard for an architectural something. I'm like, okay, thank you. And I'm thinking, architectural maybe because he did all these pièce montées and things and whatnot. And I told my pastry cooks, I think Pierre's coming in, like, what? And sure enough, he showed up. He drove out from Cambridge to Wellesley, which is not, it's a half hour drive to come try my food.

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

I could not have been more humbled by him visiting me. And I could not have cooked more food in my life for him. But that's how this world works, right? Because he showed me so much. And literally, for me to be able to cook for him was one of my, you know, proudest moments as a chef, to be honest.

SM:

Oh, I love that. I'm going to move back a bit then. Well, a bit forward rather. Because you won't. . .  when you. . . . How did you get to the point when you go, I've done all this work, now I'm going to open my first restaurant. And I want to know how that happened.

MT:

Yep.

SM:

And you began to take east and west and I want to know where, because I think you were one of the first people to ever go east west. Is that right?

MT:

So, credit goes, the first chef in this country that everyone knows is Wolfgang Puck. When he did Chinois. . .

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

. . . Chinois was literally. . .

SM:

Yeah, of course.

MT:

. . . blending what Eastern and Western techniques and ingredients.

SM:

Very close to us.

MT:

So. Yeah, Wolfie gets credit for doing, you know, when he had Chinois, that was the paramount East-West restaurant in the country. My mentor was a gentleman you would know, Ken Hom, because he spends a ton of time. . .

SM:

Of course.

MT:

. . . in England and France.

SM:

Oh yeah, he was wonderful!

MT:

So, Ken Hom is really the father of East West cuisine, right? He wrote East Meets West a long time ago and I got to work with Ken. . .

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

. . . when I was sous chef at Silks at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel with Ken Oringer. Ken Oringer and I were co-sous chefs at Silks in 1991. And Ken. . .

SM:

Wow.

MT:

. . . and we both took the job because Ken Hom was a consulting chef. And Ken Oringer’s East West food is his best food, I think, of everything he cooks. So, we got to meet Ken and that’s how I really. . . Ken really is. . . . We met and we had a lot in common, right? I trained in France, he was born in Hong Kong, I’m Chinese. And we love France, we love Chinese. He’s like, he’s literally when I was cooking on the line, we were doing our events together. He’s like, stick to this cuisine. This is not a trend. This is not a fad. Chinese cuisine and French cuisine are here to stay forever.

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

And propagate it. Because there’s plenty of Italian chefs, there’s plenty of Mediterranean chefs, there’s plenty of French chefs. Make your own niche and do it the best. And that, you know, like Ken’s advice there was obviously paramount for my career. Your question though, how I ended up deciding I needed to do myself, like you just said how your wife is like your right side and it can straighten you out. My wife said, quote, you need to, you need to open a restaurant and be a chef owner because you gotta stop getting fired.

[Laughter]

SM:

[Laughter]

MT:

And. . . It’s a true story because I, I opened a restaurant in Palo Alto. I won't name the name, but it was an Asian style restaurant and I did everything for this person. And this person ended up like a Dr. Jekyll Mr. Hyde. And after I hurt my back and I did everything, he's like, oh you're young, you'll get a new job. I get fired. And then I go to the next restaurant. And this is a great one in Santa Fe. The East Meets Southwest Cuisine, which sounds a little bit convoluted. . .

SM:

Oh.

MT:

. . . and forced, but actually is not. Cuz think about this, you'd really appreciate this. The flavor profile, quite often in Mexican food and down in the South, cilantro, chilies, lime juice.

SM: 

Yeah.

MT:

Well, those are the exact same ingredients in Thai food and all over Southeast Asia.

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

Right? Lime juice, cilantro, chilies. So East Meets Southwest was actually not a stretch to do. You got to use acid and chilies and this. And so, I did this and I did this great job for two years. I got them the highest ratings as a guy. I brought the first James Beard dinner to, to New Mexico. And they're like, oh, you're young. Sorry, you're too expensive. I get fired again. And like. And honestly, Simon, I didn't do anything bad. I didn't steal. I didn't have an affair. None of that. I just got fired. So, my wife literally was like, all right, you're now at the point in your career. You got to be a chef owner. And that's when we moved to Boston. And then we did the big search. And then we found this great grocery store in Wellesley. And Wellesley was, for those that want to open their own restaurant, it's a lot different now. The most important thing, I still think, and Cornell did teach me, this is location, location, location. You have to pick a place.

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

So, in Wellesley, I didn't have to be the best East-West restaurant or Asian restaurant. I just had to be a decent restaurant because there weren't very good restaurants in the entire town of Wellesley with people with money. I don't care if you're rich, but if you do travel, you do appreciate good food and good wine. So, I wanted to provide that. So, I built where there was no competition. So even on a slow day, we still did okay because there just wasn't any other restaurants. So, I think, I think the market research is paramount. I mean, obviously, if you're the best chef in the neighborhood, Grant Achatz, you could open it up in New York and you could do that, sure. But no one is a Grand Achatz or a Thomas Keller starting. No one is. So, try to pick a place that you know, even if your food is not the best in the world yet, but it's still just really solid and good, you will make money and keep a business. Just build where there's not 50 restaurants around you that can do the same or even better. I think that's paramount. . .

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

. . . for businesses.

SM:

I, I love how you mentioned that because I remember when we went to Wellesley

he. . . my brother-in-law he took me up there and we all went there together and we had a fantastic meal. And I remember I think it was it was almost like a Taiwanese pork chop which to me is one of the great meals I ever had when I was in Taiwan and it was something like the pork chop but it was it was so good. It was so good. So, I think from that point of view it was fantastic. I just absolutely loved that and we drove up, I can't remember exactly where he lived but we drove all the way up there and it was fantastic. But a lot of that kind of East-West that has opened since then, there's been a lot of that. So, they don't work. So, why, why do you think the kind of fusion or, you know, we . . .

MT:

Yeah.

SM:

. . .say sometimes in America, you know, confusion.

MT:

Yep.

SM:

And can you start talking about that? Because sometimes people, you know, we've got in London and it's actually been working a long time. It's a kind of Jewish Fish and Chip shop and they kind of mix it all together, but it's very good and it's very, very popular. So, I'm trying to think how some work and some just don't. Is that because they're. . . not because of the food, but because of their others? They're, you know, they're not being able to do the, you know, the spreadsheets. Not being able to do all those or is it because they're just dreadful?

[Laughter]

MT:

No, I think it's, I mean, you mentioned it and I, I think, I think bad Chinese food is bad. But bad fusion food is worse. Because you said it's called confusion because here's, here’s the skinny. I think you have to earn the right to blend cuisines. And what I mean by that is learn traditionally first how the Chinese treat sesame oil. Because we even put a tablespoon of sesame oil in two gallons of chicken stock, right? Because it's so strong. Learn how the Thais buy lemongrass and treat lemongrass and break lemongrass down. This is the white part only, not this part. Learn how the Japanese treat wasabi. You're not gonna, because every young cook can get every ingredient in the world, right? And they could create a vinaigrette. . .

SM:

Yeah, absolutely.

MT:

. . . with lemongrass and peanut butter and escargot, that is like, voila, this has never been done before. Well, there's a reason it's never been done before, because it tastes horrible, right? Don't cook to do something that's never been done before. Cook to make something delicious based on your training. So, when I say you need to earn the right to blend, learn how the French treat, you know, Dover sole, how they treat that fish. . .

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

. . . before like, and learn how the Chinese use fermented black beans. We never use a handful of that in any sauce, right? Two or three because they're so strong.

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

Once you learn tradition, and then I was lucky, I actually got to go to Japan and work with Kobayashi. If you don't have that opportunity. . .

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

. . . go find the best Japanese restaurant in your town. There's still a Japanese chef there. And find out and watch and see how they grate wasabi or use their soy sauce. Once you learn the traditional ways of using these ingredients and techniques, you then earn the right to start blending. But if you blend without understanding the base, you're going to end up with horrible confusion food. And I think that's why. . .

SM:

Yeah, that's. . .

MT:

. . . when someone says we're a fusion restaurant, I'd rather go to the Chinese place. Now, granted, there was Gray Kunz. Gray Kunz was a master, right, at Lespinasse.

SM:

Oh. I went to his, I went to his restaurants two or three times, Lespinasse.

MT:

Unbelievable, right? But he did exactly what I'm talking about. He learned French food. He went to Asia and trained. He earned the right to do the food he did. And it was phenomenal. I mean, really unparalleled. His food was just, just delicious. And look, not every dish I do every dish any chef does is going to be spectacular. Of course, not. But I do think and that's it by the way you're never gonna be a great French cook if you don't learn the basics of French food either right so no I'm not saying anything that's different than any other food but I do think if you want to start blending some really different bold flavors from Thailand with France or you know from this Sichuan province right and in Italian food you really need to understand how the nuances of those flavors and then how cooking it brings out the flavors to blend. I think that's the key.

SM:

I think that's perfect. The way you answered that is, you know, and I know Gray Kunz. And in fact, I went in the back there and he doesn't remember, but that's where I first met Rocco DiSpirito. He was the saucier there. I still remember him when they. . . . And that was the first time I was ever taken around the kitchen, which coming from London at the time was very fun.

MT:

I mean, that is one of the reasons Rocco's so good is Gray Kunz, 100%.

SM:

Oh, absolutely.

MT:

And, and true story, I, I almost got a job in New York. I was trying out for a job and they just like, we're gonna call it Union Pacific. That's the working title. It was actually Union Pacific. And it was me and one other chef left for the job. And I cooked my heart out. And this guy cooked his heart out. And then I find out the next day that I didn't get it. And this guy named Rocco DiSpirito. So, I call Ken Oringer, I'm like, who the hell is this Italian guy that cooks better than me, east-west? And Kenny's like, oh no, no, no, Rocco is legit. He is a fantastic cook. And you should not be sad. . .

SM:

Yeah.

MT:

. . . that you lost to him. He's one of the best. And sure enough, when I went to, you know, Union Pacific two months later, he's, oh my God, his scalloped mustard oil, I mean, Rocco is, I...

SM:

Oh, everything, every food.

MT:

. . . for East West Rocco because of Gray Kunz. Yeah.

SM:

I always used to see him there. He never knew me at that point. And he, he was. . . . Always the food there. And I'd sit at the bar, I think, and just have. . . . And then before I got the plane back to the UK.

Okay, let's, let's, can we, I hope you don't mind me keeping you a little while because I've got a couple of. . .

MT:

Oh no, no, Simon. I love, I love chatting with you, man. I could do this all day.

SM:

Oh, this is fantastic and I hope people at home are enjoying this because Ming’s got so much about this.

 OUTRO MUSIC

SM:

Make sure to check out the website associated with this podcast at www.EatMyGlobe.com where we will be posting the transcripts from each episode, along with all the references and resources we used putting the episodes together, in case you want to delve deeper into each subject. There is also a contact button, so please do let us know if there are any subjects that you would like us to cover.

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Thank you and goodbye from me, Simon Majumdar, and we’ll speak to you soon on the next episode of EAT MY GLOBE: Things You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know About Food.

CREDITS

The EAT MY GLOBE Podcast is a production of “It’s Not Much But It’s Ours” and “Producer Girl Productions.”

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We would also like to thank Sybil Villanueva for all of her help both with the editing of the transcripts and essential help with the research.