I first learned to cook from my father who had to teach cooking to one of the sons so that dinner could be prepared while Mom rested after her day job before joining Dad at the night club. I was chosen because I had an aptitude. We usually had a typical Chinese American dinner: soup, rice, stir fry or steamed meat or fish and vegetables. Mom taught me how to prepare American dishes: creamed tuna, spaghetti with meat sauce and mushrooms, meatloaf, fried chicken and Thanksgiving dinner in which she had a stuffing recipe that I still use today. But it was Dad who influenced me most. He was born and grew up in Portland, OR and was a contemporary of James Beard, who was also from Portland.
Through my college years and afterward in the community, I would cook. The Red Guard had a breakfast program for children and when that did not take off, we fed the seniors in Portsmouth Square. We also had celebrations where we cooked “donated” food. If I were to name a book that changed my life, Julia Child’s “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” would be right up there with “The Autobiography of Malcolm X”, “Red Star Over China”and “Moby Dick”.
When I started working in the hotels. I was a janitor and dishwasher. Later, I was a busperson and then a waiter. However, my true passion was for cooking, and at the first opportunity I moved into the kitchen, an act unheard of because waiters make good money and cooks have to work very hard for a lot less.
I first cooked for Chef Jimmy Chen at the Van Ness Holiday Inn in San Francisco where I started as Head Pantry, preparing all the cold dishes for the hotel. In New York, I moved to the hot side at the UN Plaza Hotel. I started in the staff cafeteria, cooked breakfast and for most of my career, was the lunch sous-chef at the Ambassador Grill. Working at the UN Plaza has been very rewarding. In the 1980s, cooking was a new thing for most Americans and although our Chef, Frances Drillion, was from Nice, he spent two years cooking in Hong Kong. Frances was a top level French chef who was excited to incorporate the multi-cultural environment of a New York kitchen into his menus. This meant that the technique had to be meticulous, but the flavors, ingredients and presentations were totally new.
The hotel always had visiting chefs who would present their menus for a month or so in our restaurant. They usually came from Europe: different regions of France, Italy or Germany. When three famous chefs from Gascony cooked at the Grill, we were put on the map for being the very first American restaurant to serve fresh foie gras. Through the 1990s, we partnered with several UN missions to promote tourism by hosting food celebrations. This meant either a famous chef from a particular country would cook at our restaurant or a mission would give us recipes and sources for ingredients and we prepared a menu based on that. These food celebrations would usually kick off with a party where the country’s Ambassador and guests would be presented with cultural performances as well as the nation’s food. We did this a couple of times a year. In this way, as well as from my co-workers who hail from all over the world, I learned to cook food from many, many nations and regions: England, Ireland, France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Greece, South Africa, Egypt, Iran, India, Bangladesh, China, Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Mexico, Argentina, Puerto Rico and, of course different parts of the US. I also ate a great deal of fantastic food.
After 38 years at the UN Plaza Hotel, I retired as a sous chef due to the COVID 19 pandemic