ProfileFrom cooking his underwear in a wok to his Michelin star, executive chef of Mott 32 in Hong Kong Lee Man-sing on his 35 years in the kitchen
- Lee started his career at 14 in a cha chaan teng, before working in Cantonese restaurants, the Jockey Club and five-star hotels around Hong Kong
- He talks about tough working conditions, 16-hour days with a long commute, winning a Michelin star and cooking different cuisines at Mott 32
“My mother’s eyesight was not good, so when I was growing up I had to help my family by doing chores. I could cook simple things like stir-fry vegetables and rice. As a child I liked to eat and taste things, and my father was very picky about his food. But I was not the studying type and knew I couldn’t just sit around. So when I was 14 years old, in 1981, I got a job working in a cha chaan teng.
I delivered food to customers carrying a plastic basket. The head chef thought I was hard-working and took me under his wing.”
What did you cook at the cha chaan teng? “One of the first things I cooked there was beef stir-fry with rice noodles. But it tasted terrible because I used those old stoves where you can’t adjust the temperature so you had to be quick or the food was easily burned.
“In those days, the kitchen was hot and the floor was wet and slippery. For six months I learned how to roast meats like duck and char siu, and made egg tarts and pineapple buns. It was quite tough – we only had two days of holidays a year, the first two days of Chinese New Year.”
Where did you go afterwards? “After two years at the cha chaan teng, a relative introduced me to a restaurant job and I knew I had to improve my skills. It was a traditional Chinese restaurant in Yau Ma Tei that’s not there any more.