Anita Lo on cooking for Barack Obama and Xi Jinping

"I have always loved to eat. I come from a food-obsessed family. Whenever we travelled, my parents would research the cuisine and we'd learn about the culture through the food. When I was studying French in Paris, I learned how to cook for myself. My sister had been living in the city and was taking some classes at La Varenne. I ended up going there, too, taking a couple of week-long classes and I fell in love with it."

"A little bit. I grew up eating many cuisines. My mother was Malaysian Chinese and her family was from Fujian province. My father was Shanghainese, but he died when I was three years old. My mother remarried and I had a white stepfather whose former family was German. They both worked so we had nannies, and the one who was with us the longest was Hungarian. It was normal to me, but I grew up in a monochromatic suburb of Detroit so we were definitely freaks. But I have a multicultural identity. People talk about fusion cuisine but I think all cuisines are fusion. They have been influenced by their neighbours. Cuisines evolve, like language."

"It can be from a staff meal a dishwasher makes, I read, travel, I draw on things that I grew up with, or have eaten at other people's restaurants to get ideas. What I'm trying to do with my food is make it taste good. I think it's great a guest can have something they've never had before, and be exposed to something that's not usual in their culture, like braised tongue, but the Japanese grill it medium rare and it's delicious. I've served cod sperm [milt]. It won't be the centre of the plate, it'll be a garnish, with pollock."

"I've had Annisa for about 16 years. I didn't start out wanting my own restaurant. You don't want one because it's so crazy and so hard to open a restaurant in New York and it's getting harder every year. I did it because it became apparent to me that if you weren't in charge you wouldn't be able to do what was in your heart."