The Nostalgia Behind Your Favorite Chinese Food | Vincent Yeow Lim | TED

My grandfather was a restaurant owner.

My father was a restaurant owner.

My name is Vincent Yeow Lim.

I'm a chef, content creator and restaurant owner.

Owning and running a Chinese restaurant

is one of the hardest and most valuable things I think you can do.

When we first arrived in Australia, my dad opened a Chinese restaurant.

I would go there every single day to help him out.

That was my way to spend time with him.

And slowly I developed my love for cooking.

At the age of 15,

I was able to use a wok to cook and to serve customers.

Now I’m running a 100-seater Chinese restaurant.

The hard work that I saw my dad put into Chinese food

makes me feel really proud.

Proud that I was lucky enough to learn from a master.

When I tell people that I'm a chef cooking Chinese food,

I want people to value it the same way that I do.

So what is the value of Chinese food?

Is it the taste?

Is it the hard work and the training?

Or is it the dish's history and the nostalgia it makes us feel?

To me, it is all of those things.

But being in the restaurant industry,

I can tell you the most obvious value of food.

And that is the price at which we choose to set it at.

The perception of Chinese food is that it is indulgent,

yet cheap.

But the value of Chinese food is so much more than that.

There is no formal culinary school to train to be a Chinese chef.

And after the pandemic,

there was a shortage of Chinese chefs in Australia.

Now the cost of ingredients,

labor

and demand for Chinese food is high.

The amount of skill required to cook the first dish that I ever learned

doesn't match up to the price.

The first dish that I ever learned to cook was the fried rice.

Fried rice is the easiest dish to cook, but also the hardest dish to get right.

I actually wasn't allowed to serve customers

until I got this dish right.

(Laughter)

The oil goes into the wok first,

but only when the wok is hot enough.

The egg goes in next.

This creates a nonstick coating

for when the rice hits the hot wok.

(Stove beeps)

From experience, you can tell when the rice is too wet

or if the wok is too hot or too cold.

All these small factors will create a different end result.

If the rice is too wet, you lose the smoky aromatic flavor.

But if the rice is too dry,

you're basically eating pebbles.

(Laughter)

Now we add a little bit of yum, yum.

(Laughter)

Now we add the cooked meats and vegetables.

I'm tossing it to combine the flavors of the meat and vegetables with the rice.

Even if we were to remove all the meat and vegetables,

your rice should still have all the flavor.

(Sizzling)

From years of experience,

I can tell you the difference between a good fried rice

just from the feel and from the smell,

without even having to take a bite.

(Applause)

And I thought --

I thought that was enough.

But I realized cooking with one wok was way too slow.

So I took the knowledge from my dad

and taught myself the dual wok cooking technique,

using two woks to cook two different dishes at the same time.

This requires coordination,

organization and years of training.

What makes it harder is the combination of dishes coming up next.

They have endless possibilities.

Chow mein, sizzling garlic prawns,

egg foo young.

When one is cooking, the other is served.

When the other is cooking, the next is served.

The goal is that no matter the combination,

all the dishes get to the table at the same time.

People expect this in a Chinese restaurant.

People expect variety.

In a Western restaurant, you open the menu,

there's 20 items.

When I first started, I had 300.

(Laughter)

In a Western restaurant,

you can often judge the food by the decor,

the plating of the dishes

or even by the number of different forks for each course.

But in a Chinese restaurant, it's a little bit different.

You can often judge it

by things like the kids sitting on the first table doing their homework.

That's when you know a Chinese restaurant will have amazing food.

(Laughter)

(Applause)

I was that kid.

(Laughter)

To a lot of us Chinese immigrants who started our own restaurants,

the restaurant isn't just a business.

It's a part of our lives.

We eat almost three meals a day there,

and often we just use our homes as a place to sleep.

We dedicate our lives to these restaurants and to making delicious food.

In Chinese cooking, we use a lot of strong flavors

like ginger, garlic, chilies

and even shrimp paste.

The different flavors, I think, are why people like Chinese food,

because every bite is different, and you never really get bored.

But flavors, flavors are also built with the tools we use.

When you use a wok, you get wok hei,

known as "breath of the dragon."

Wok hei is the reason why noodles and rice always taste better at a restaurant

than when you try to cook it at home.

Wok hei is the combustion of oils in the air

that make that smoky aromatic flavor.

But wok hei also tastes like nostalgia.

Growing up in Malaysia, the kitchens are outside, just like this.

You can smell every ingredient that goes into the wok.

The air is thick with humidity,

and the fragrances of the food, they linger around so much longer.

Those memories, they become nostalgic.

The sense of home is what I feel when I taste Chinese wok cooking.

Nostalgia is what makes a good dish taste ten times better

and that much more valuable.

But the value of Chinese food

is often compared to fast food, quick and cheap.

Although we've spent years developing skills to cook faster,

Chinese food isn't fast food.

It requires skills, mastery of ingredients and nostalgia.

In 2017, my dad passed away.

I looked up to him.

He was my best friend.

When he passed away, I realized --

I realized my passion of cooking dishes from my childhood.

I was working as a chef at an airline’s first class lounge at the time,

but I didn't have any memories of the dishes I was cooking.

I wanted to feel closer to my dad.

So I quit.

I dropped out of university on my last semester.

I hopped onto a plane, and I flew over here to Sydney.

And I took over the restaurant that I own today.

I wanted to record everything that my dad taught me,

so I shared it on social media.

It went viral.

Hundreds of millions of views.

A lot of people related to the recipes that I was cooking

because it was what they grew up eating with their parents.

I remember this one fried rice he made.

I was eight years old at the time.

It was the first time I recall my dad stepping into the kitchen cooking.

He made this fried rice

with spam, seafood, peas

and a little bit of dark soy sauce.

It was a little bit salty,

but it was the best fried rice that I've ever had.

I cook and I've always cooked because it was a way to connect to my dad.

It was something that we shared.

Cooking represents all the hard work and memories that we had,

learning the art, mastering the skills

and understanding the history of Chinese food.

To me, the value of Chinese food

is so much more than the prices you pay at my restaurant.

So the next time you visit a Chinese restaurant,

just remember.

It's not just a plate of fried rice.

It's so much more than that.

Thank you.

(Applause)