Chef and restaurateur Lucas Sin shares his success story, starting with the first restaurant he started in his hometown of Hong Kong at just 16 years old
Chef and restaurateur Lucas Sin shares his success story, starting with the first restaurant he started in his hometown of Hong Kong at just 16 years old. Lucas talks about what he loves about his culture and the family member who told him not to become a chef. He talks about his time at Yale University and the inventive popup restaurant that he ran out of the basement of his dormitory. Lucas details how he found himself in a Michelin-starred kitchen in Kyoto as a college student, what he learned in such an elevated fine-dining setting and the reminder he received from a fellow chef that changed the course of his career. He talks about the landscape of the Chinese food industry in the United States and how it shaped his own foray into opening fast-casual Chinese establishments. He talks about the balance of blending tradition with modernity and how to push boundaries while remaining true to the history of Chinese cuisine. Lucas talks about his feelings towards the accolades and recognition he has received in the culinary world and his Crack An Egg With episode on FoodNetwork.com.
Start Your Free Trial of discovery+: https://www.discoveryplus.com/foodobsessed
Connect with the podcast: https://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/food-network-obsessed-the-official-podcast-of-food-network
Follow Food Network on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/foodnetwork
Follow Jaymee on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jaymeesire
Follow Lucas Sin on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lucas.sin/
Watch Lucas Sin’s Crack An Egg With Episode: https://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/crack-an-egg-with/episodes/crack-an-egg-with-lucas-sin
Find episode transcripts here: https://food-network-obsessed.simplecast.com/episodes/lucas-sin-on-his-why-not-mentality-affection-for-microwaves
Jaymee Sire (00:02):
Hello. Hello and welcome to food network. Obsessed. This is a podcast where we dish on all things, food with your favorite chefs, food influencers and food network stars. I'm your host, Jamie Sire. And today we have a passionate Chinese chef sharing his story of how hosting popups in his dorm at Yale evolved into a restaurant empire. But before we get to our guests, we have a quick update food network. Obsessed is going to take a quick break from releasing new episodes for the rest of June, but do not worry. We will be back in July with more brand new episodes and guests. So we hope you enjoy your start to summer and make sure you're following food network obsessed wherever you listen to podcasts. So you don't miss the next new episode. All right, let's get to it. He is the chef at both John the kitchen and nice day, Chinese takeout. It's Lucas sin, Lucas. Welcome to the podcast. You opened your first restaurant when you were just 16. So I think this is just a very interesting, a simple fact that really speaks volumes about your passion for food and dining. So let's unpack that a little bit. How does a 16 year old come to open his own restaurant?
Lucas Sin (01:20):
I mean to this day, I don't know for sure
Lucas Sin (01:58):
You know how some rappers have rapper names and chefs have chef names. I fancied myself as like the clay pot kid, cuz I was my favorite dish. So it was, I mean, it was ridiculous. It was an abandoned newspaper factory 13 courses. Wow. Mostly word of mouth. People would meet at a secret location and then we would send them a little bus. They'd get on the bus to get off at this newspaper factory. They'd walk in into this, basically this private wine cell that someone had lent us and it had to semiprofessional kitchen detached to it and we just started cooking. We had no idea what we were doing, but we bootstrapped it and tried to figure it out along the way I think. Yeah. I mean that's honestly how it got started was yeah. A bunch of kids taking themselves way too seriously and playing restaurant
Jaymee Sire (02:42):
Lucas Sin (02:46):
So we were, I, I was excited by this idea of Hong Kong food, Hong Kong food being a particularly diverse and multicultural, but also, you know a type of authentic fusion, right. Between cultures. So in that sense there was, there was a lot of Japanese influence. There was a lot of Korean influence, but obviously different regions of China. And a lot of like Western style plating. I mean our, our, our signature tradition was as far as a 16 year old can have a signature tradition was it was clay pot, rice, you know, pork belly mm-hmm
Jaymee Sire (03:52):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, you speak so fondly of your hometown Hong Kong, how would you describe it to someone who's never been
Lucas Sin (03:59):
Hong Kong? Hong Kong's changed quite a bit, but I mean, we, when I grew up the government tagline was Asia's world city and it was very much sort of an entryway into the rest of China, if not Asia. And from a food perspective, I mean, I grew up with some of the most delicious food in the world, but it was also really cool to see both very traditional, authentic sort of like Cantonese cooking next to these places called ANGs that are like Hong Kong style diners, which is the Hong Kong reappropriation. So to speak of basically European cafe culture. So we have coffee and tea scrambled digs with toast and that sort of stuff. So like Western, what Chinese, what Hong Kong people would call Western style food, which really is like Hong Kong, Western style food. So there's a huge amount of diversity and it's really wonderful in colorful city. How
Jaymee Sire (04:48):
Did that food culture really shape your perspective that, that you have now as a chef,
Lucas Sin (04:52):
When we think about how food comes to be the way that it is and how food culture evolves, it's important to think about the food ways and the, the different cultures that contribute to something, right. And so Hong Kong was really good canvas for exploring how food cultures come together, how they change from from immigration, from economic principles, from ingredients that are available. And you see these really interesting sort of like melange of, of ideas come and, and become tradition, right? I mean, Hong Kong DS S are really the best example. My favorite tradition S are, is big pork chop rice. So it's a thick cut pork chop that is marinated. So Chinese salad squeeze it a lot. And then it's deep fried. And then it's put on top of a bed of golden fried rice, which is rice fried with eggs and nothing else.
Lucas Sin (05:38):
And then it's got this like almost bona or like tomato sauce that is bolstered primarily with ketchup. So it's like this sweet tomato sauce and then cheese over the top. So it's like this baked one, this baked pasta dish. Right. but it's on top of rice, it's got this, like your shouting wine, soy sauce, Riad pork chop, it's Def fried, but it's also like crispy saggy at the same time. And, and that's, I mean, it it's right in between that like east meets west, right? Yeah. like stuff like that is what's most exciting to me, you know? Yeah. Even in the us, and now that I live in New York city, it's almost like I it's the opposite side of thing. It's like American Chinese food, which is in a lot of ways, like an American version of Chinese food instead of a Chinese version of like Western food. Yeah. Like that duality is like, I mean, really exciting to think about.
Jaymee Sire (06:21):
Yeah. I mean, when you are feeling nostalgic for home, what, what are you cooking up? Are you making what you just described? Is it yeah. Is it the breakfast? Is it something else? Yeah.
Lucas Sin (06:30):
Yeah. Breakfast is certainly part of it. I mean, you know, like we grew up with these foods that we love and we get scared to cook them cuz we don't wanna muck it up.
Lucas Sin (07:13):
Like, you know, we have this steamed meatloaf and my dad would say, when you're mixing this meatloaf, you can only mix clockwise. And why as a professional chef, as a, I didn't know, and as a professional chef, I was like, there is no way that that is true. I don't understand the principles behind blah blah. And so you start interrogating those ideas and you try it out and you test it out. And that ended what you end up doing. And you end up translating this intergenerational knowledge about home cooking into like modern culinary principles in this case, mixing the meatloaf in one direction and ensures that you're extending the protein strands as long as possible, so that when it's steamed and, and you know, the, the, the, the water comes out of the meat and it puffs up a little bit that it's locking in all that like bounciness and you get this texture in China, we call Q, which is like a sort of like, toothsome like little bit of resistance, your teeth, like bounciness, kind of like a, kind of like a fish ball, you know, mm-hmm
Lucas Sin (08:19):
And yeah, I mean, those things, that's not how dad explained it. That's not how grandma explained it. It's been a little bit of a, a journey and certainly a lot of fun to ask myself those questions about traditional Cantonese home cooking techniques.
Jaymee Sire (08:32):
Yeah. I mean, you mentioned your dad, your grandma mm-hmm
Lucas Sin (08:41):
Yeah. That's the first thing I remember her ever saying to me, cuz so my grandmother was a cook. She was a cook at the back of Majong parlor, you know, where people play Majong the gambling and she wasn't a cook by any sort of gen like magnificent or luxurious means. She, she certainly didn't want to be a chef. She ended up having to be a cook and knowing the hardship that she went through, she was very keen on most of her life sort of getting her, her kids, her, my dad and myself to not have to cook for living anymore. So that's why she said don't become a cook. But I think the, my dad was very, very instrumental in introducing like a curiosity about food. He would always say, you know, like if you're eating three times a day that's three times to like that's three opportunities to think about the food. Think about who made it, where it came from, whether you like something why you like it and try to dig a little deeper and use it as a bit of an exercise. I think that's, that's how it really, the love of food really got started. But for cooking and for restaurants, I think honestly, it's like it's spending time in these restaurants and feeling the comradery of the kitchens and falling in love with kitchen culture. Yeah. While I was in school,
Jaymee Sire (09:50):
I know also, you know, during your younger years in middle school, you, you attended summer camp in the us and you were introduced to, you know, you kind of mentioned it a little bit ago, American Chinese food. What do you remember about that experience and how it, it kind of like maybe, you know, switched to perspective that you already had? Yeah.
Lucas Sin (10:08):
Yeah. I, I don't know. I was just like bizarrely shipped over to the us for random middle school sort summer school program. And I honestly don't know why we were there. But I found myself where were like somewhere in the new, somewhere in new England, maybe at high school that wasn't a high school during the summer. I don't know. And we were staying there. It was the first boarding experience, so to speak. Right. Okay. And I just remember I'm gonna make this up. So I really need to fact check me, but I believe it was like Tuesdays or something. It was like very specific. It was like one day of a week, this Chinese dude would pull up in a van outside the dorms at like 10:00 PM or so right before curfew. And he would have all these styrofoam boxes at the back of his van of all the different Chinese American dishes.
Lucas Sin (10:45):
Right. Every permutation general. So with fried rice, orange chicken with fried rice, chicken and broccoli with brown rice and all these things, and we had a little bit of cash spent. And so it was, it must have been something like six or $7 for a box and the kids would pour out the dorms and like get this like late night Chinese food. And I remember being struck because this is my first American Chinese experience that I could not tell the difference between general. So chicken, orange, chicken, Sessy chicken, all the rest
Lucas Sin (11:38):
Like it's, it's for like students it's for people who are working it's it's kind of like sweet greenish and Chipotle in a lot of senses. Right. But when we are making that food, you're not thinking about general sauce, chicken. It was until people started asking, Hey, so what's happening with the Chinese American restaurants that are currently in the us? I think at some point we pulled the data from Yelp to figure out how many Chinese restaurants they were. And like, we're looking at like 46,000 people pandemic. And that's a lot of Chinese restaurants. Mm-Hmm
Jaymee Sire (12:44):
Yeah. And, and, and these concepts were kind of, I mean, born, you know, while you were at school yeah. At Yale your, your focus was on cognitive science and English. Yeah. But in the meantime, you're, you're hosting popups out of your dorms basement on the weekend. Mm-Hmm
Lucas Sin (13:03):
Lucas Sin (13:47):
Okay. I would have some like 48 hour broth going and like soy pork belly and all these like toppings and for five bucks, like I would cook your instant noodles and then put it in our broth with whatever toppings you wanted. And it was a little sort of cheeky in that sense. But every semester we came up with a new concept just to, with a new team. And we just did what we did in high school, which is like play restaurant and pretend to know what you're doing.
Jaymee Sire (14:38):
Lucas Sin (14:42):
Yeah, I mean, we, I remember we, one of the more ambitious ones was called fortnight. We called it because we only opened once every two weeks on Fridays. Okay. Because we needed the week develop it. And it was a different menu every week. And five courses silly, the SI the idea, the better, the, the better. So, you know, one of them was five courses, like the five stages of relationship, you know, we had like, like had, like, we had like a first kiss thing. We had like a, I remember we had like a makeup, a, a breakup cake. It was like a, it was heart shaped and like shattered it and like all these like silly things
Jaymee Sire (15:21):
Yeah. What was the feedback from the rest of the students? I mean, obviously it was a very popular you know,
Lucas Sin (15:26):
I think we had fun. I think we had fun and I mean Yale in particular were very lucky there because there is a culture of food and there is an interest in food, in the food industry. Alice Waters obviously of she Panis her daughter went to Berkeley and Alice was very, very important in establishing the Yale farm. So there's a lot of like talk and projects around sustainability and food at school. But there's also now that a lot of people who I cooked with in college now are in the food industry, whether they're in product development or they're in marketing or they're sustainability, it's really wonderful to see that like food as a viable sort of industry for, for Yale kids. Mm-Hmm
Jaymee Sire (16:07):
Lucas Sin (16:27):
I learned Japanese my first year of college and then went to Japan to study study abroad for the summer and in lieu of really going to Japanese class, I just ended up spending what seemed to be most of my time, hanging out with grandmothers and just cooking like Japanese home food and really, really like fell in love with Japanese food and was convinced that I wanted to become a Japanese chef. I had always had this dream of backpacking and cooking and going into, and knocking on people's doors and cooking, whatever kitchen, home kitchen, a restaurant kitchen that would let me in. So that's what I did my second bout in Japan. I packed my knives and then had my backpack and then just started in Tokyo and made my way all the way down to Nagasaki, stopping in every city staying at hostels and just literally knocking on restaurant doors and asking if I could like stay and hang out and, and stage basically know I had this whole little spiel, I'm a student I'm from Hong Kong. I study in the us and I just want, love your food. And I just wanna be here for a while. And most of the time they're like, no, get out
Jaymee Sire (17:29):
Lucas Sin (17:30):
And the other half of the time, they're like, yeah, come out. I have a peach farm. As long as you help me harvest peaches, I'll teach you how to make net leaf food. And I was like, yeah, definitely. Like, I mean, that was sort of like, you know, meandering. I had very long hair back then bandanas and bandaids and just like trying to get absorb as much as possible. And during those travels, I had met a chef at Kikunoi in, in Kyodo and spent a little bit of time there which is very hardcore of the kitchen to work in through mission star. World 50 best type of place had a really, really, really good time learned so much. But on the last day, the chef reminded me that I was Chinese in, in a, in a Bon vanilla Villa way. He's like he's telling me his own story about going to France to learn French food and then going to France and realizing that he was Japanese and coming back to run his dad's restaurant. And I had this sort of like epiphany that, oh, you're totally right. I am Chinese. And I had have like, neglected to think about my heritage in that way. And maybe I should think about and start cooking Chinese food. So that's how I ended up going back to school and meeting some of my business partners who convinced me to start thinking about what the future of Chinese food looks like in the us. And that's when Jen, the kitchen first opened,
Jaymee Sire (18:39):
What was the point where you knew that, like, this is what you wanted to do for the rest of your life and not pursue, you know, the, the degree that you had that you were going for at Yale?
Lucas Sin (18:48):
I wish I, I was coming off with a little bit more intentionality, but that, that spirit of my dad saying why not opening the restaurant still to this day, I think is like the carrying is like the primary driver for my decisions or the lack thereof. I don't know. I, I don't think that I ever thought to myself, you know, this is what I'm going to do so much as it was at some point I'm just, you know, slicing cases and cases of scions and him looking to like in the restaurant that we've opened and was like, I guess there's nothing else to do now. Like this is it. Like, there's nothing else that I could possibly be doing. But, but cooking, obviously I think the pandemic has changed a lot of that. It's really interesting to think about what the role of the chef is in society. Cuz there's so many different types of chefs, the question of whether you want to be anchored to a restaurant or whether you want to be in the kitchen working in the past or whether you want to start telling people, stories in whatever platform and a, a format that you can find, like there's so many ways to be a chef now. And I think I would hope that I find a little bit more intentionality that why not? Yeah. in the next couple of weeks or months.
Jaymee Sire (19:50):
Yeah. Oh, I like that though. Like why not? You know, that, that, that helps like take away some of those barriers that, that we, that we place on ourselves. But I think it's interesting because you know, obviously you have your experience doing these popups, you know, at a very young age, you had this experience working in very fine dining. What about all of that kind of pushed you to what you're doing now, which is, you know, with Jens a kitchen and nice day. Yeah. Kind of more of that, like you said, like that fast casual kind of atmosphere.
Lucas Sin (20:18):
Yeah. I mean, so I mean, I'm, I'm really, if you think about like building Chinese food in the us and I, I really think the metaphor of like building it is important because a lot of times when we think about food, we, especially food history. We have this implication that it is what it is because it ended up that way. But I think there's a lot of like people putting in effort and entrepreneurship and into building something like crafting something and Chinese cuisine in America is something that's crafted at the hands of a lot of like these mom and pop shops, right? Like we invented general source chicken. And then we built a system for other people, our cousins who are coming from Fuji to like have this very similar recipe and expand. I mean there, these Chinese restaurants everywhere, they're remarkably similar, but there is no headquarters in Illinois that says here is the general sew chicken recipe, right?
Lucas Sin (21:08):
Like in Arizona, the, as Sesame, chicken's gonna taste a lot like the, the one in Vermont and that's like this, the whole system was like built. So I think when we think of a building Chinese food in America, sometimes a helpful metaphors, like we, we want build a house and then there's a roof and there are columns in the middle, there are rooms. And then there's like this base level. And the roof is like really important genre pushing often a little bit more pricey restaurants. Right. Mm-hmm
Lucas Sin (21:58):
It's the food that they're ordering for delivery is the food that they're eating at their desks. And it doesn't have to be the most glamorous, but it should be a part of the regular conversation. And when we first opened Ginza fast, casual was the way people were primarily eating, right. Especially in the coastal cities people were eating they're, they're building in their own they're customizing. And there's slight, there's some interesting flavors that like compliment the type of diet that they want and type of way they want to eat. And so it just made a lot of sense to do fast casual. It wasn't certainly, it wasn't a didn't feel like a step down mm-hmm
Lucas Sin (22:40):
And that was my first sort of like chef experience because I learned so much about the food industry. I learned so much about entrepreneurship and scalability and these things that a lot of cooks that go into the regular system of becoming a line cook and the sous chef and whatever, and then eventually opening the restaurant that takes a lot more time and they don't get to like really see those systems so quickly. Mm-Hmm
Jaymee Sire (23:12):
What, what is the significance of the name gen ZZA?
Lucas Sin (23:15):
So GZA is a pre it it's a Chinese term that came even before Confucius. It means something along the lines of like, like a role model, like a, the person you want to aspire towards like a community leader, right? Like GZA is like a, is a hypothetical ideal of a person that you want to aspire towards. Like you want to be like that one day. And it came about because when my business partners were thinking about the name and such talking to our advisors and whatnot, they kept talking about, oh, you know, like it's important to us that we become, we would be at Juza like that, that we want to like aspire towards being like this. And then he was like this man, Rick hunt, who's a genius said, you just, just named the, just name, the restaurant Juza and said, oh, cool. Yeah, great idea. It's horrible to pronounce, but okay.
Jaymee Sire (24:10):
What, I mean, what, what do you feel like the, the story of the food is that you, you tell at this restaurant?
Lucas Sin (24:15):
At GZA, I think we're concerned with a lot of the times, a lot of people think of Chinese food as monolithic which is to say they think of the stir rise, the bright, spicy, savory salty flavors eaten with rice. And that's very Cantonese because that's how a lot of the American Chinese food that we know. A lot of that came from Southern China, different parts of Southern China. The food that we started off making at GS was a slightly more Northern we didn't serve rice for a very long time because we were interested in this idea of flour and water that becomes noodles, right? Different shapes of noodles. We served these things called trend being like BS. They're wraps in the beginning. We've changed significantly since then, but a lot of it is just like a little bit like a lot of pickles.
Lucas Sin (24:58):
Breeze meats, lightly certified vegetables, sort of like homey Chinese homey food. I think we do these tomato, egg noodles quite well there. Tomato egg, any, any Chinese kid listening to this will like know this dish because it's the standards sort of like home style dish, you know, tomatoes certified with eggs mm-hmm
Jaymee Sire (25:31):
And then how did nice day kind of evolve from what you guys had had been doing at Ginza?
Lucas Sin (25:36):
I think during the pandemic, we, by, by the time the pandemic happened, we'd been thinking about Chinese takeout for a while and we wanted to work on it because we were quite honestly, even before the pandemic and we were looking at, we were watching all these Chinese restaurants close and a lot of the time it's a good thing, right. You know, you have these bomb and pop shops. Their kids are lawyers now and engineers, and they're not coming back to run the shop. And they have these huge leases on their hands that they can't quite retire from, cuz nobody wants that. And you know, there are all these like sort of like issues from just like restaurant business side of things. And we're asking ourselves like, is this an opportunity? And how do we, like, what can we do to alleviate it?
Lucas Sin (26:17):
So our main concern with nice day now, you know, the restaurant we just opened, we opened with Mr. John, who had that, who had purchased at lease he's from Fuji. And he had this little shop that he took over on a strip mall in long island. And they basically only do take out, they have those like two, three seats in the front. They have a massive 200 item menu
Lucas Sin (26:58):
We changed a little, obviously the branding has changed. The ordering has changed. We onboarded a lot of like online delivery and that sort of stuff, but little sort of just doing the thing that we did at Ginsu, which is built a slightly more contemporary Chinese takeout place and working with the previous generation to make sure that we weren't just gentrifying it so much as we were sort of involving the previous generation in, in this new iteration of Chinese food in America, which to me is what I find the most endearing and exciting about nice day is that we have, we we're, we're hoping, and we're trying to build that relationship.
Jaymee Sire (27:33):
How do you balance that though? Like with, you know, honoring the tradition, right? Mm-Hmm
Lucas Sin (27:44):
I think you have to, I mean, it comes first and foremost from a place of understanding, you have to really understand where that previous generation of restaurant owners is coming from what their wants are, what their struggles are. And then you have to understand how to translate that into the modern day. And you need to be careful about what you add. I think when we first opened nice day we got a little bit of coverage and there see media, especially, you know, media in the us tends to want to sensationalize, you know, so there was a little bit of implication that Lucas in is the cheeseburger eggroll Maack and cheese fusion overlord. And I was, and he was like, yes, we have these like silly, stupid dishes, like cheeseburger eggroll is cheeseburger. And eggroll like mushed together. And there's no Finese to it.
Lucas Sin (28:31):
It is not the future of Chinese food, but it is, it sells well. And it's the conversation started. What we mostly sell still to this day is golden fried rice which is just fried rice, done properly with eggs, like, like underneath the, a big pork chop rice chicken Loma, a general, so chicken like those and like chicken and broccoli, beef and broccoli, like those dishes are still, most of our are menu and that's the stuff that most people are eating on a regular basis. And to, we need to understand and sell that stuff and understand it from how it's been made and how it's been consumed. If you have that understanding, then you can play with adding some little things to start the conversation and maybe help people in with more outrageous dishes like cheeseburger, egg girls
Jaymee Sire (29:24):
Yeah. I mean, you've kind of, you know, talked about that on social media, this, this idea of like elevating Chinese cuisine. Why, why do you think that that's the sentiment and how do you correct that narrative through your own platform and, and whatnot.
Lucas Sin (29:36):
Yeah. you only need to elevate something if you believe that it's down low. Right. Right. If we have this implication that Chinese food is low and that it's not interesting. And it's perhaps like not tasty and it's cheap and all these things, then with that stereotype and that idea in mind, then we believe that Chinese food needs to be elevated. I don't think elevate is the right word or the right mindset. I think it's, it's about like modernization, it's about context, right. It's like changing the context in which it's eaten. Part of it is education that, to tell people, Hey, Chinese food is interesting, but part of it is some degree of like modernization. It's not to make it better so much as it is to like bring it up to speed. Right. Okay. And, and it's, you know, it's ingredients and it's environment and the way it's delivered to you, it's like packaging, it's branding. It's like all those little things and the flavors also like they, they can be modernized, but it certainly doesn't need to, we don't need to come at it with a, with a a perspective that I can make it better as if it weren't as if people weren't working hard and putting their time and effort into this in the first place.
Jaymee Sire (30:33):
Yeah. Just changing that, that, that mindset and that, that perspective. Speaking of modern, you know, appliances I did
Lucas Sin (30:48):
A shower, I love microwaves a
Jaymee Sire (30:50):
Shower cap. Wait, you have to, you have to tell me more about this
Lucas Sin (30:53):
Okay. So Cecilia, who I had mentioned a couple minutes ago she honestly she was a mentor of mine. She passed away recently very sadly, but she, I think she was probably one of the most, if not the most important Chinese chef in America. So far she I met her through my, one of my college professors and for whatever stroke of luck ended up being able to stay with her in her home when we were visiting San Francisco. And I was there once and she asked if we were hungry and we said, yes. And she went into the kitchen and she said, watch this. She pulled out this fish, she cleans it. She stuffs it with ginger and Scion with little splash of wine. She rests it on two chopsticks on top of a larger plate that fits a fish.
Lucas Sin (31:43):
And keep in mind that this time she's like 98, 99 years old. Wow. she is retired, but she's constantly speaking. Whether it's on panels or in interviews, she's still getting James Beard awards. You know, she, she, she, she is still a force of nature. And she has this fish prepped and she's like, hold on. She hobbles into her bathroom, into her, into her shower. She grabs her shower cap and she stretches her shower cap of this thing. And it all clicks into place right now. This like chefy sciencey thing. We're oh yeah. Totally makes sense. Because what's happening is when this fish is gonna go in the microwave, the way microwaves work is that every molecule is vibrating at a specific frequency and the friction that's cause causes the heat. Right. And so what you ended up doing is you end up steaming the fish inside out when you're steaming in a conventional steamer, the steam's coming from the water molecules outside into the fish.
Lucas Sin (32:34):
So at the end of the day, inevitably, the outside will cook more than the inside for a microwave that doesn't happen as easily. Second of all, because of the shower cap, you don't have to add extra liquid to it. So the fish is steaming in its own sort of moisture. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just intensified. Right. She puts this in the microwave, she looks at me and she's like Lucas microwave on high for eight minutes. And I was like, got it. And then she's like Bulletproof and she takes it out. She like pours off the excess sort of like gunky, fish, water. And then she puts like the soy sauce and the little like sizzle of the hot oil over the ginger and scaling over the top. And obviously, you know, obviously this best chef in the world, like as like the, this is it's delicious.
Lucas Sin (33:12):
Yeah. And I's so inspired by this lady. Like she, like he's been around for so long. She's brand, one of the most important restaurants in America. And she is just microwaving me the steam fish of the, of 90, 99. And I was like, this is, this is, this is what it's all about. Right? Yeah. This is like, this is like modern Chinese food and people don't talk about this stuff. I do love the microwave. I, I don't really have very many steaming I don't have like a steaming apparatus at home. I seem very, very infrequently because most of the stuff I need to steam out I'll do in the microwave. It's faster. Oftentimes it's more consistent and you know, I'm in fast casual. I'm like fast food. Yeah. I love sandbagging. You know, I love cheating and I just, yeah. It's like, and microwaves are the best way to do that at home.
Jaymee Sire (33:56):
Why, why do you think that there, I mean, you know, cause obviously when they first came out, it was just like, oh my gosh, this amazing, you know, contraption. And then it kind of went the other way where it's like, oh, you use the microwave. Like, it's kind of like a bad thing. Like why, why do you think that that is?
Lucas Sin (34:10):
And I mean, there's MIS science, right? People are like, oh, you're like Ning your food. I, I mean, that's also sort of like an unfortunate, like turn of phrase. Sure. Yeah. And it's like, no, we're not like we're not radi cooked by radiation. Massive. Just like misunderstanding of the science and the technology behind microwaves to this day. I mean, this is like a year, 3000 level technology that was somehow we found sure. You know, like so many years ago that everybody should have at home. Yeah. I love microwaves. There are other, like really interesting pieces of tech that you see in a lot of professional kitchens. I hope to see eventually one day in home kitchens that I think would make a lot of our convenient home cooking better. Like why like freezing with liquid nitrogen is great. I saw some of the freeze, a freaking salad with liquid nitrogen and they reheated it in basically a convection refrigerator.
Lucas Sin (35:01):
So it's a refrigerator at like 40, 41 degree, like refrigerator temp with a fan. Okay. Which obviously makes so much sense. And so you're reheating, right. Reheating or like bringing to temp, bringing to cold temperature, this leafy green that has been frozen really, really quickly. And when it comes out, it's not bruised. Right. You know, like the, the bag spin that we have at home and the freezer, like, because it frees too slowly and it's reheated too slowly, all of those cells burst. And so you lose all the Chlo. Like it just becomes like mushy, but here we are with like rapid freezing technology. Now that would be so cool to see at home. And we can do so many interesting things with, with things like that. Also, you know, in all the, the reason why subway is delicious, I suppose that might be a controversial exp
Lucas Sin (35:45):
But the reason why like toasted bread in these like toasted hokey type of restaurants are so good is because of these piece of coming called turbo chefs and turbo chefs are kind of like, they're kinda like, like microwave massive, like convection oven, things that are way too big for our homes, but that would be so cool to see one day
Jaymee Sire (36:14):
Space for.
Lucas Sin (36:31):
Oh, goodness. That's a great, I mean, that's a question I'm working through with my therapist.
Lucas Sin (37:21):
And the other chefs that I've met are chefs that I would, I'm I'm cooking with now. Right. I get to go to the restaurants. I, I float around the world and hit, hit them up and say, Hey, can we, can I cook in Austin with you? I just came back from Atlanta. I was cooking with friend of mine called Ang who runs an amazing Thai restaurant called to market. And I was working the line with his mom who works at Curry station for like a week. It was awesome. Wow. And it just like really cool to meet all these like young kids and starting to feel the kinship in these chefs who are not going through the traditional route they're, they're taking the leap, they're taking the risk to open their own restaurants. They're very insistent on telling their own story. And I mean, the, the, the best part of this is I mean, I do a lot of popups under now this group that we call the shy boys club. Yeah. Between me and my buddy, Eric, who runs eight at six, and win-win in New York shy boys club is called shy boys club because we make introverted Asian food.
Jaymee Sire (38:18):
What is that?
Lucas Sin (38:19):
It's food. It's
Jaymee Sire (38:23):
Very shy food.
Lucas Sin (38:24):
I know just like shy food that we're too shy to cook in our own restaurant basically. Okay. Because the idea is like, we have people Eric's a Taiwanese chef, so people expect them to make Taiwanese food strictly I'm a fast casual Chinese chef. So I can't put crazy things on the menu. It has to be kind of fast, casual. Right. Mm. And so we just wanted to get together once a month to make food that was silly and stupid. We did things like our favorite one was a very elaborate hot pot night with truffle and caviar and all these like sauces that we would make for people based on their personalities.
Lucas Sin (39:08):
So it's just, it's a chance for us to have a little bit of fun, but also, you know, it's like those popups, the great thing about popups is they're a really quick way for you to learn a lot while running your own restaurant and, and being in other people's kitchens, you see how those kitchens are run for a short amount of time, you meet their cooks and you get to build new ideas and test out new ideas. If it's really, really great, then you can take it back and use it for something in the future. And it's the time for experimentation. Mm-Hmm
Jaymee Sire (39:57):
Yeah. So is there going to be a shy boys restaurant at some point? Or is this just for fun and popups
Lucas Sin (40:03):
Jaymee Sire (40:26):
Okay. I'll I'll have to be on the lookout then for yeah, please
Lucas Sin (40:29):
Come
Jaymee Sire (40:29):
Through for yes. I would love to
Speaker 3 (40:34):
Coming up next. Lucas tells us about his episode of food networks, digital series, crack and egg with
Jaymee Sire (40:46):
You also filmed an episode of crack and egg for food network mm-hmm
Lucas Sin (40:56):
Yeah, I mean, it's a breakfast set. The main thing is macaroni in soup with usually ham or something. Okay. And then there is also scrambled eggs. Hong Kong style, scrambled eggs are the best scrambled eggs in the world, in my opinion. They're very velvety. They cook in about 10 seconds and they're the, the perfect set type of curd. They're very, very silky. And then it comes with usually a thicker cut piece of toast. And then some type of drink most often either milk tea or Yu, which is half coffee and half milk, oh, sorry, half, half coffee and half tea with evaporated milk. And it's made in this very like elaborate sort of like oxidizing tea technique. And it creates this very sort of velvety and like luscious milk tea. And when you add coffee to it, it gives it a tinge of like bitterness. That is really bounced up I a little bit of sugar and evaporated milk. And to go back to your question a little while ago, that that's type of food that I would not have made until I had the time to start exploring it. During the pandemic,
Jaymee Sire (41:56):
What makes Hong Kong style eggs, you know, so much better than any other kind of eggs.
Lucas Sin (42:01):
So the eggs basically are they're usually Hong Kong style, scrambled eggs. They're cooked for a very short amount of time. And inside of the egg usually is some type of fat and some type of also liquid, which helps emulsify the yolks and the whites that fat can either be oil or it could be evaporated milk. Sometimes some people will add something like corn tar or potato start to help it set so that after it's scrambled, it doesn't bleed like liquid as it sits on the plate. So it's, it's, it's, it's not dense at all. It's not fluffy because there isn't a huge amount of air in it, but it's almost like layers of this rich sort of delicate scrambled.
Jaymee Sire (42:39):
Hmm. You kind of mentioned in the episode too, you, you love this, you know, technique forward cooking and you've kind of talked about that throughout this conversation too. What, what does that mean to you? Exactly.
Lucas Sin (42:48):
I, I think, oh, well it depends on who's listening for chefs. I would never like in front offic chef would never say technique forward because I'm not, you know, mounting foams and like using, you know, I'm not, not like sorry, list of, and like not verifying things, which seems to be technique for. But I, I certainly am. I, I think it's just important to think about technique or at least how food is made when we're thinking about even simple indulgent home cooked meals, something as simple as scrambled digs it's worth paying attention to mm-hmm
Jaymee Sire (43:33):
Hmm. Would you ever consider cooking, you know, competitively on a food network show?
Lucas Sin (43:38):
I, I mean I honestly, I can't figure out whether I'm a competitive person.
Lucas Sin (44:20):
Right. and it was a lot of fun. It was fun because you're cooking with a bunch of other students who didn't go to culinary school
Jaymee Sire (44:55):
That. So you're already doing that on
Lucas Sin (44:56):
A daily basis. Yeah. Everyone's already doing on and popups are basically like that. It's like, you forgot to design this dish and you just have to pull whatever off the shelf and blah, blah, blah.
Jaymee Sire (45:04):
So, so, so what's next for you?
Lucas Sin (45:05):
I'm really well, I, I cooking in a lot of my friends' restaurants in the next couple months, which is really exciting. I've been big on Toronto. I was in Toronto for about a little over a month recently and felt in love with the color, the culinary landscape there. Especially in terms of Cantonese and modern Chinese cooking. A lot, I've met so many chefs that I'm going to be cooking with in Toronto. So I'm going back quite a bit this year to do events and, and massage a little bit and learn a little bit more. And we'll see. I mean I I'd really hope to find the right time and place for me to take a little bit deeper into some of the things I'm interested in with regards to Chinese cooking. And hopefully be able to tell people about it in some way, shape or form.
Jaymee Sire (45:50):
Well, we look forward to to seeing that all unfold. I'm sure lots of big things are in store. We are gonna finish things off with little rapid fire round, and then we have one final question for you. All right. So favorite condiment.
Lucas Sin (46:03):
Oh, goodness
Jaymee Sire (46:24):
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Carb of choice
Lucas Sin (46:28):
Rice, for sure.
Jaymee Sire (46:34):
That's me. Oh my gosh. One veggie for the rest of your life. Which one is it?
Lucas Sin (46:38):
The correct answer is some type of onion probably. Because I mean that's irreplaceable. Yeah. But you know, your favorite vegetable, I'm really bringing a chayote now. Or we call it Buddhist Palm in China. I really, really like that cured raw as well as like cooked a little bit, like very, very barely, almost like a cooked Cucu or, or like a Coke zucchini type.
Jaymee Sire (47:02):
Okay. Favorite late night snack.
Lucas Sin (47:05):
Oh my goodness. I wish it wasn't. I mean, I'm real you how smoked almonds are a little bit too salty. Yeah. I love that. Like the ones like the generic ones outta the bag. Yeah. I love the I'm big on smoked almonds right now.
Jaymee Sire (47:16):
Okay. you've got a day off in New York city. What are you doing?
Lucas Sin (47:22):
I, what am I doing in New York city? I don't I've recently, I don't know, maybe drinking black coffee and walking around the village. Ah, no, you know what I would be doing. I'd be going to places that nobody's ever told me about in Astoria. Or Jackson Heights, love
Jaymee Sire (47:39):
Jackson Heights.
Lucas Sin (47:40):
Jaymee Sire (47:52):
Lucas Sin (47:58):
I just finished my extends book on called tastemakers about five women, five women who change the food scene in America, which is really wonderful. I knew about BUE yang chow, who was the first Chinese chef that she, he that he had featured, but the other woman were all new to me. And even there's a little bit about the like reconsidering Julia child's legacy, which I thought was really wonderful. And he's one of my favorite food writers certainly in writing right now,
Jaymee Sire (48:25):
Kitchen tool. You can't live without
Lucas Sin (48:27):
Chopsticks.
Lucas Sin (48:31):
Why just the, the wooden ones, because, well, this is a Cecilia story, but basically we went to a fancy Chinese restaurant and they gave her very, very, very nice lack of chopsticks and she railed
Jaymee Sire (49:14):
That's the way to go advice. You would give your younger self.
Lucas Sin (49:17):
This is advice that was translated to me. It was given to me already, but when you're hoping to learn something build a list of the best people to learn from in the world. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and then skip the first one and go directly to the second one. Because if you want to learn the best, if you wanna work for the best restaurant in the world, if you turn up, there's gonna be 40 interns trying to learn the same thing. If you go to the second one they're oftentimes more hungry and most importantly, more willing to teach because they want to invest in you because you're investing in them. And that that's given me a lot more learning opportunities and going directly straight to the top where the people are, are already at the top of the
Jaymee Sire (49:55):
Game. Yeah, no, I love that. That's really great. Alright. So our final question, we ask everybody this question on food network obsessed. So what would be on the menu for your perfect food day? So we wanna know what you're eating for. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, dessert, you can throw in some snacks. Oh my, if you want, it's just, there's no rules. You can travel time, travel, spend however much money you want. Anyone can cook these for you. You can cook them. Yeah. We basically just wanna know, you know, your, your ideal meals throughout the day. Yeah. Yeah.
Lucas Sin (50:24):
Oh my goodness. This is the most difficult thing in the world.
Lucas Sin (51:07):
Would've been so cool to see. And you keep seeing these like beautiful photos of her in her CHIO, in her Chinese dress. And she is like floating around the dining room and just like charming the pants of the people like James Beard and geo child and all these people and ask waters and going to the market and stuff. I think that would've been just such a lovely day. Yeah. unfortunately I think I met her a little bit too late in her life and didn't have as much time with her as I wish, but yeah, for whatever reason, I think I'm thinking about her a lot. So I would love to have eaten at her restaurant or even, you know eaten with her. Yeah, when I saw Cecil, she actually would enjoy bringing me to restaurants that she didn't like
Lucas Sin (51:50):
Like, don't do this when you, you know, when you, when you get up there and you start opening your own restaurants which was hilarious and very many stories about from then. But yeah. I think that would've been wonderful for dinner. And yeah, and, and the dessert usually from that is she was the first person she says to have brought almond pudding almond jello to the us. She served it and it's made from Chinese almonds, which are not related to regular, like sort of like American almonds that we know. They're apricot kernels, they're sweeter. They're very floral. They're almost like they're, they're very, very bright and you make an almond milk out of them. And, you know, nowadays you set it with agar, but you could have said it with gelatin or something. And it's perfect for me because as a chef, as a savory chef, I dunno how to bake and horrible at dessert. And so all of us just make Panda cotta gels and custard and call it a day and like put something crispy on time and be like, look dessert. And so yeah, the dessert that I always end up doing is almond pudding and I would have loved to have her original version, but yeah, I'm also thinking about that dish a lot.
Jaymee Sire (52:52):
I love that. I love that. That's so perfect. And it's been such a, a joy talking to you and hearing your story and I can't wait to see what's what's next. So thank you for your time.
Lucas Sin (53:02):
No, thank you.
Jaymee Sire (53:07):
We will certainly be on the lookout for Lucas. I have a feeling he's only going up from here and be sure to check out GZA kitchen in Morningside Heights and new Haven, and also nice day Chinese takeout on long island. Also, you can catch Lucas's episode of food, network's digital series, crack and egg with on food network.com. And just one last reminder food network obsess is going to be taking a break for the rest of June. We will be back in July with brand new episodes. Thanks so much for listening and make sure to follow us wherever you listen to podcasts. So you don't miss a thing. And if you enjoy today's episode, please rate and review. We love it. When you do that, that's all for now. We'll catch you foodies next Friday.