I listened to Chef Ming Tsai yesterday on NPR's All Things Considered program. As part of their "How Low Can You Go?" challenge (cook a meal for four for under $10), Tsai cooked a chicken fried rice dish. He related how fried rice is close to his heart because it's the first thing he cooked on his own, when he was 10 years old, in Dayton, Ohio. Family friends arrived from out of town when his parents weren't home. He invited the travelers inside with the traditional Chinese greeting, "Are You Hungry?" They replied they were famished. He'd never cooked before, but having watched his parents and grandparents make fried rice countless times, that is what young Tsai prepared for the guests. They loved it, and Ming Tsai said that was the first time he experienced the gratification of making people happy with food.
I've always enjoyed watching Ming Tsai, and not only because he's a strapping fellow—tall, dark and handsome: His enthusiasm seems genuine, he manages to sound unscripted, and he engages his audience without pandering to them. Educated at Phillips Andover, Yale (Mechanical Engineering) and Cornell (Master's in Hotel Administration and Hospitality Marketing) before cooking in Paris and Osaka, Tsai is a third generation Chinese-American who nonetheless identifies himself as "very Chinese." I love that he hasn't severed his ethnic roots; nor does he rely upon them for shtick.
Tsai was one of TV Food Network's early stars, and as I listened to him on the radio, I remembered a New Yorker piece from that period (10 or more years ago) about a food personality guru hired to help groom Tsai for television. To encourage him to look up often from his food preparation and smile into the camera, the guru taped a photo of Tsai's Golden Retriever just beneath the camera lens. I love that he was compelled to smile whenever he looked at the image of his dog.
But as yesterday's NPR segment concluded, I realized I love Ming Tsai most because of what he and I share: a delight in making people happy with food.
This article appears in Apr 29 – May 5, 2009.