Profile | Practice makes perfect for Wynn Macau casino’s Michelin-starred chef, who can cook a dish ‘10 to 20 times’ before putting it on the menu
- Wing Lei’s Chan Tak-kwong is a perfectionist, something he inherited from chefs he trained under. ‘It is normal for me to cook one dish 10 to 20 times,’ he says
- ‘The patience of these old folks really touched me because many modern chefs now do not spend time on research and experimenting,’ he says of his training
“I was passionate about cooking from a young age. When I was a child, food was scarce. Every day, I would wake up and wonder if my brother and sisters would have enough to feed themselves. From morning to evening, we were hungry. The advantage of working in a restaurant was that I had food, a place to sleep and a salary. During the 1970s and ’80s, Hong Kong’s economy was doing well so I chose to be a chef after I had arrived from China.”
What was it like to be a chef back then?
“There was a lot of yelling in the kitchen, and profanity was not unusual. As a chef, I would hop from one restaurant to another, work and learn from various masters. I gained experience in preparing trivial food as well as more elaborate dishes for banquets.
“By the end of the ’70s, people were still ordering simple dishes like stir-fried chicken. It wasn’t until the late ’80s and the ’90s that people began to eat shark’s fin and abalone. Manchu-Han Imperial Feast was very trendy, too.”
What are your favourite ingredients?