When journalist Jennifer 8 Lee (the subject of last week's column) walked into Hong Kong-born Sam Lau Chi-ming's restaurant three years ago, it changed his life - even though it couldn't save his business. Lee declared Lau's Zen Fine Chinese Cuisine to be the 'world's greatest Chinese restaurant outside of China'.
Lee shone a big spotlight on the chef's little corner of Richmond, a suburb of the Canadian city of Vancouver. Until Lee published her review in a book about Chinese food around the world - Fortune Cookie Chronicles - in March 2008, Zen had had a small but loyal following. 'Small' was, unfortunately, the operative word; in the six months between Lee eating at his restaurant and her book being published, Lau struggled to keep Zen afloat. Her review kept the business running for a few more months, as new clients went to try Lau's fare: Cantonese food with Western influences.
'Ten, 20 years ago, you could say Chinese food was world renowned but the quality really went down in the last five to six years,' says Lau. 'It's garbage now. Even in Hong Kong, the Chinese food is not as good as it was 20 years ago.'
The self-taught chef credits his new-found renown to having practised his craft daily for decades. His first job after emigrating to Canada in 1979, when he was 18, was washing dishes at a restaurant, but his real occupation at that time, Lau says, was observing.
'The cooks in the kitchen don't want to train you, so I watched them and I wrote down everything I saw,' says Lau. 'After everyone left at 1am or 2am, I would stay in the kitchen and I just practised.'
There was one dish he made over and over because he knew if he got it right, he could ask for a promotion. Yangzhou chao fan is a standard Cantonese-style fried-rice dish but perfecting it takes patience and practice, says Lau.
'I practised making that dish for more than a year, repeating and repeating every day. People kept asking, 'Aren't you bored making Yangzhou fried rice?',' says Lau.
