Chitchat Sinkie Parents: Only Losers Want To Be Chink Chefs! Good Chefs Serve AMDK Cu

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VERY morning before service at Red Star Restaurant, 89-year-old Masterchef Sin Leong heads to a corner of his 6,000 sq ft kitchen to pay respects at a red altar, bearing a black-and-white portrait of his late sifu ("mentor" or "teacher" in Cantonese). His sifu's teachings - on the importance of being prepared and always doing your best - are framed right next to it.

It has been more than five decades since he worked under his sifu's mentorship, but the respect chef Sin has for the man who taught him how to wield a wok has lasted a lifetime.

Today, the concept of sifu and apprentice in Chinese food has gone the way of the dinosaur. So too, restaurants of Red Star's scale (its dining area alone is about 10,000 sq ft), thick menus filled with over 150 dishes, and refined cooking skills that require the many years of experience one needs to chalk up just to earn the title of "chef" in a Chinese kitchen.

'Four Heavenly Kings'



"In the past, if they understudy any chef, the chef is like a master to them. Now when people come and work, they learn a few dishes, then switch to another place. Not only that, they take the recipe and start to make changes, and call it their own creation," says chef Sin's business partner, Masterchef Hooi Kok Wai, 79, in Cantonese.

"Young employees job-hop to get promotions. They learn to cut vegetables at one place, a few months later, they go to another place to learn to saute fish, then a few months later they move on to be a junior chef. Unlike last time, when we were stationed at one spot for years until we became experts. We had to learn to cut the same vegetable in different ways for different dishes, for example," he elaborates.

In fact, chefs Sin and Hooi just might be the last chefs of their kind, since no one has been knocking on their doors to be their understudies despite their revered status as veterans in the local F&B industry. In an age where fluffy scrambled eggs and Michelin stars reign supreme, not many are even aware that these two men make up half of the "Four Heavenly Kings" of our Singaporean Chinese cuisine, along with the late Tham Yu Kai and the late Lau Yoke Pui.

Even at Spring Court, which is arguably Singapore's oldest Chinese restaurant at 87 years, hiring has been quite the challenge for third-generation owner Mike Ho, 47.

"Singaporeans have choices, they don't have to work at a kitchen of a Chinese restaurant. It's the perception too - there's glamour in French or Italian cooking, but none in Chinese cooking," says Mr Ho. That's why his kitchen of over 20 staff is mostly made up of Malaysians or Hong Kong-ers, with fewer than five Singaporeans who are all in their 50s or 60s.

"Of course, young people are influenced by the media and celebrity chefs. They don't have a celebrity Chinese chef to idolise, or to inspire them," he points out.

One of the few well-known Asian chefs is Martin Yan - he of "Yan can cook, so can you" TV fame - who was born in China but is currently based in San Francisco.

He too acknowledges the lack of Chinese chef role models in the industry, and traces this to the roots of Asian culture.

"Asian parents tend to think only students who cannot make it into university go into the kitchen, so there's a stigma that if you're a chef you're not well-educated. But in the Western world, chefs are well-respected, even though Chinese chefs actually make a lot more money than Western ones. Plus F&B and hospitality are the top economic sectors in most countries," says chef Yan, who was in town earlier this week to hold a dialogue session on the "Future profession of Chinese chefs" at At-Sunrice Global Chef Academy.

As it stands, the future of the Chinese chef profession looks pretty bleak. Even if an aspiring chef does not go the apprentice route, there are very few options at the academic level. Culinary schools in Singapore focus more on Western or European cuisine, with At-Sunrice offering a five-week Diploma in Culinary Arts courses, which teaches both Asian and Western techniques. Each round of this course has space for 25 students. The Culinary Institute of America as well as the School of Applied Science in Temasek Polytechnic also train their students in both Asian and Western techniques, while Shatec specialises in Western cuisine.

Chef Boon Ng, a senior chef instructor and assistant faculty manager at At-Sunrice, says: "Less than 10 per cent of graduates go on to work in Chinese restaurants - most go into hotels or Western and modern-Asian restaurants. They don't go into Chinese cuisine because they feel it's very restricted, and very specific."

http://www.businesstimes.com.sg/life...hinese-cuisine


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