Jacky Chan

I was born in Dongguan, China, and I moved to Hong Kong with my parents when I was 4 years old. During my childhood, my father worked very hard, and my mum was sick, so there was no one to cook for me.

Since the age of eight, I started eating out by myself almost every day, and that gave me the chance to try many different kinds of food, especially Cantonese cuisine, which is my all-time favorite. I first entered the kitchen and cooked for myself when I was 15 years old. I made a very simple dish, but the fact that I could create something tasty with my hands astonished me.

A year later, I decided to become an apprentice chef, as that’s the necessary step to build a career in the culinary world, especially in Chinese society. For 9-month I worked in the kitchen and assisted the chefs with preparation work, but no actual cooking was allowed. One day, an opportunity came, and it gave me a chance to show that I could cook.

A customer ordered a Yang Chow fried rice while all the chefs went away for a break. As I was the only staff in the kitchen, the manager just told me to get the order done. I was very nervous yet excited, and I tried to prepare the dish according to what I’d learned. Just before the dish I cooked was served to the customer, our head chef came back. He had a taste of the dish and said to me, “Kid, well done.”

It was the first time I cooked things for someone else, and the positive feedback gave me the confidence to continue to pursue my dream of cooking. At the age of 26, I was the chef in charge of an established seafood restaurant, and at 29, I became the executive chef.

Cooking is my job as well as my hobby. I love to create new recipes and improvise with anything that I have, no matter whether they are Asian or Western ingredients. My favorite ingredients are beef and seafood.