The Most Famous Chinese Chefs

The Most Famous Chinese Chefs

Chinese food is well known for its spicy flavors and unique ingredients. In the United States, the first documented Chinese restaurant opened in 1849 as the Canton Restaurant. Soon after, a significant number of Chinese restaurants were operating all over America.

Let’s look at the most famous Chinese chefs:

1. Martin Yan

Martin Yan – Wikipedia

 Martin Yan is a culinary expert renowned all over the world. His known for advancing Chinese food, making it simple for the cook and divine for the visitors.

Yan was born on 22 December 1948 in Guangzhou, Guangdong, China to a restaurateur father and a grocer mother. He began cooking at the age of 12 and learned the traditional method of Chinese barbecue while working at his uncle’s Chinese restaurant.

Martin has a diploma from the Overseas Institute of Cookery of Hong Kong and a Master of Science degree in food science from University of California, Davis. The American Culinary Federation has designated him a Master Chef.

Yan has opened a chain of Yan Can Restaurants and founded the Yan Can International Cooking School in San Francisco. He has written over two dozen cookbooks. The chef’s award-winning PBS-TV cooking show Yan Can Cook has been aired since a982.

2. Cecilia Chiang

Cecilia Chiang – The New York Times

Cecilia Chiang is a distinguished Chinese American culinary expert and restaurateur best known for introducing San Francisco, and the United States, to a more authentic version of Mandarin cuisine

Chiang was born as Sun Yun in Wuxi, Jiangsu, China on September 18, 1920. She came from a wealthy family with her father Sun Long Guang, being a railway engineer and her mother, Sun Shueh Yun Hui, coming from a wealthy family that owned textile mills and flour mills.

After escaping to Japan during the Chinese Communist Revolution, Chiang opened a successful Chinese restaurant, Forbidden City, and later opened The Mandarin in San Francisco.

In 2013, Cecilia won a James Beard Foundation Award for lifetime achievement. In July 2016, a six-part cooking series, The Kitchen Wisdom of Cecilia Chiang, was released on PBS.

Chiang died on October 28, 2020, in San Francisco at the age of 100.

3. Peter Chang

Peter Chang – The New York Times

Peter Chang is a Chinese chef specializing in Szechuan cuisine who is known for his restaurants in Virginia and other states in the Southeastern United States.

Chang was born in 1963 in Hubei, China. He attended culinary school and began his career working on a cruise ship on the Yangtze River.

After working in luxury hotels and winning national cooking competitions in China, Chang was encouraged to take the foreign service cooking test, earning a two-year contract to work in the Embassy of China in Washington, D.C.

In March 2011, Chang opened Peter Chang’s China Grill in Charlottesville, thus marking the beginning of his restaurant chains. Chang was a finalist for a James Beard Award in 2016 for Best Chef, Mid-Atlantic.

4. Shirley Chung

Shirley Chung – Bravo TV

Shirley Chung attended the California Culinary Academy, San Francisco, where she trained in classic French and Italian cuisine.

She began by working and opening restaurants for Thomas Keller, Guy Savoy and Mario Batali. In season 11 of “Top Chef” in New Orleans, she was the finalist. She also competed on season 14 of BravoTV’s Top Chef, where she named the runner-up of Top Chef.

In 2014, Shirley opened a restaurant in Orange County, Twenty Eight, featuring modern Chinese cuisine. Then after she opened China Poblano which was awarded the Best New Restaurant Award by James Beard in 2011.

5. Stephen Yan

Stephen Yan _ Flickr

Stephen Yan moved to Canada in the 1960s and owned two Chinese restaurants in Vancouver. He hosted the Canadian television cooking show for CBC Television, Wok with Yan.

Yan was born in Hong Kong, China. His cooking show was a hit because of his spontaneous humor that included one-liners spoken with his trademark Cantonese accent or him playing with his food or cookware.

He has appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, Good Morning America, Live with Regis and Kelly, and other shows from the United States to Australia.

6. Susanna Foo

Susanna Foo – The Spruce Eats

Susanna Foo is a Chinese chef best known for her work in Chinese/French fusion at her self-titled Susanna Foo restaurant in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The two-time James Beard Foundation Award winner was born in the Inner Mongolia area of China, and grew up in the Shanxi province.

Foo moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1979, to help her husband’s family run their Chinese restaurant, Hu-Nan. Prior to this, Susanna had never worked in a professional kitchen.

When Jacob Rosenthal of The Culinary Institute of America dined at the restaurant, he was inspired by Foo’s work. He arranged for her to be trained in French cuisine, as well as inviting her to attend the Culinary Institute itself.

Susanna later dedicated her first cook book to Rosenthal, saying that he changed her life.

7. Chan Yan-tak

Chan Yan-tak – Alchetron

Chan Yan-tak is a Hong Kong/Chinese chef, who is best known for being the first Chinese chef to earn three Michelin stars. The Michelin stars are considered a hallmark of fine dining by many of the world’s top chefs.

Yan-tak was born in Kowloon, Hong Kong, China. He started working in the kitchen out of necessity in his early teens, as his family needed the money.

He worked as a cook in a number of restaurants before joining Regent Hotel, Hong Kong as sous chef in 1984. Chan went on to become the executive chef the year after, and worked there for the following fifteen years.

In 2002 the Four Seasons hotel in Hong Kong brought him out of his retirement to become executive chef of the Lung King Heen. The restaurant was awarded three stars in the 2009 Guide Michelin for Hong Kong and Macau, for Yan-tak’s Cantonese seafood dishes.

8. Maria Cordero

Maria Cordero – Wikipedia

Maria Cordero is known for her own cooking show, Maria’s Kitchen on Cable TV. Her fans nicknamed her “Fat Mama”.

Cordero was born to a Macanese family of Portuguese-Chinese heritage in Macau in 1954. She worked as a line cook for takeaway contractors for office workers, thus having excellent cooking skills, which led to her having hosted 3 food and cuisine shows.

9. Jaden Rae

Jaden Rae – Medium

Jaden Rae is a television chef, author of two best-selling cookbooks, food columnist, food photographer, and food blogger in Las Vegas.

She was born in Hong Kong and raised in North Platte, Nebraska. Jaden specializes in fast, fresh, and simple Asian cooking. She has also created food-based wellness programs such as Buddha Bowls and Reverse Meal Plans.

In 2005, she founded Steamy Kitchen, which remains one of the biggest blogs in the world, with nearly half a billion-page views and over 75 million unique users.

10. Mei Lin

Mei Lin – Bravo TV

Mei Lin is a Chinese-American chef and television personality, best known as the winner of the twelfth season of the Bravo television network’s reality television series, Top Chef.

Lin was born in Guangdong, China before moving to Dearborn, Michigan at three months-old. She received her certification from Schoolcraft College.

After winning Top Chef in 2014, Lin worked as a personal chef for Oprah Winfrey before going on to open her first restaurant, Nightshade, in Los Angeles in 2019. Nightshade was named a James Beard Foundation Award finalist for Best New Restaurant in 2020.

In March 2021, Lin opened her second restaurant Daybird in Los Angeles, which is he first fast-casual Szechuan hot chicken restaurant in the United States.