 Yn amlwg yma yma i'r Llyfrgell Llyfrgell ac rwy'n ôl i'r rai'wch i ddoedd yn gilyddion Llyfrgell Llyfrgell. Mae'n unrhyw gwelio'r llyfr Yn ym Mhwili Rusll ac eu newidau'r llyfrgell Llyfrgell Llyfrgell yn y llyfrgell Llyfrgell seis. Mae'n gweithio'r llyfrigol yn gwneud am y gallu cyfnod. Mae'n bwysig i'r ymddangos o'r gynhyrch ei ffordd yn 10 mlynedd, ten months after a major refurbishments, so we, on staff, are thrilled to be back in the theatre. So that is just wonderful to see you all sitting here. The second is because tonight is the launch of the 2023 food season and I just could not be more proud to have this event, Chinese and British Food, to start the very wonderful food season with this exceptional panel of speakers. Felly, roedd y gallu bwydledig yn traeth, ffaisiadau iawn ymgyrch. Felly y gallwn ar eu mhwlad o boi'r ysgol. A rydyn ni'n gwybod, er mwyn i'n fwyfyrdd ymateb sydd ymmgyrch. Raenlos, synergyngen, a'u boi'r ysgol ffordd. Mae'r bobl yn ei gwrdd ymmggor o'r ffermdd. Rydyn ni'n gwirio allu fawr o zeidmapiais ymddir yma er bod yn ymddir 6 sgol, ymddir i'r modd yn y wdeithasedd ac ydw i. Cwm nifer i'r ffaredd, mae'n ffordd gwrdd, mae gen i ddweud y gallwn ffordd yn ddwy'r ddweud. Gan yng Nghymru, rydyn ni'n ddweud o'n ddylai nhw fydd yn amlwg gweithio. Rydyn ni'n credu rwy'n ffordd yn gweithio arweithio arweithio arweithio arweithio arweithio. Rydyn ni'n credu'r ddechrau i'r cynnig, Melissa Thompson, sy'n ei gweithio arweithio arweithio sy'n ei ddweud, Dydyn nhw Angela Cluton, nyw gyntaf â'r ddiddor yw gyda'r angen, ac also Joe Allen, judgement y mhwan sy'n wych i gael. Rydyn nhw'n g бел o'r gweithio'r ymdd manner yng Nghymru yn Llyfrgell Brydiannol. Planwch hynny, beth dyfodd y gwelith o ddim gael ganonon gyda'r gweld, ac mae hynny'n ddim ei sefydl iawn i gael i gael, ac mae'r llyfr y mae'n meddwl, ac mae'r mhwan sy'n gyllideb yn nhw'n gweithio i gael'u llyn pedal pwysig oherwydd erwch ei ffordd ddechrau, y cwylwch, ond mewn komun oedd erbyn mewn i'n ei wneud yn ysgolch yn fan hyn i gyntaf. Ym hwyl, rôl eu bod y cyfrigau yng nghymru hynny yn modd y gweithio'r llunio'r rhaglach yn ystod o'r llunio'r llunio yng Nghymru, lle mae gennym o'r llyfr yng Nghymru wedi gweld dros y gweithio ar yr wych, mae'n argymell, mae'n cymryd wneud o'r llunio, Ac mae'n bwysig o'r ddau i gwasanaeth y ddweud o'r pengir yng Nghymru, mae'n ddweud o'r gweithio'r gallu cyflogion yn y ddweud o mylwg a'r myfyrwyr yn y Llyfrgellau o'r ffotoigrafau, yng Nghymru, y ddweud o'r Chinese yn y Brytanaeth a Fion. felly byddwch yn ei wneud o'r rhaid o'r cymdeithasol a'r ddull. Ond oedd y Chinese yn y cyfrwyr yn y Llyfrgell yn y Llyfrgell, ar gyfer 60 ychydig y Llyfrgell hon, i'r Llyfrgell Unedwg, allan o'r llyfrgell yn ymdweithio ac i fwyaf'r cyfrifio ymwneud a'r llyfrgell Cynullau Llyfrgell ac i'r llyfrgell sydd yn ymgyrchu a'r llyfrgell yn ymgyrch. Mae'n rhoi sicrhau gwybodol ac mae'n ddod o'r hyffordd yn y cwrdd gwneud. Felly, rydyn ni'n meddwl i'r Llyfrgell ac yn rhoi i'r Llyfrgell yma y maen nhw, ac i'r rhaglion yn gweithio. Felly dyna eich ddechrau. Rwy'n ei ddweud, rhaid? Felly mae'n adill ddydig o'r temiddau ar gweithio. Mae ei adill i'r parol eich felly roedd. Do ddod o ddangosodd, a chi'n gallu ymddai, i ddeni tha eich ddweud o neti, maen nhw ei fod yn eich ddweud, fe ddweud eich ddweud sy'n gweithio a'u ddweud o hynny, a oedd wedi fynd i'r ddweud o brif info i chi. Mae'r ddweud i ddweud o ddweud i ddweud odyn. ar gyfer fyrdd gwrs. Byddai'r panel perthynas yn chpobwydwyr imi amwysgrifnegadau y typio arno, byddai fyddech chi'r fain, ond iddyn nhw'n dod i'r llai a fydd o'r llai fel mae'n ddannu fawr. Yn y bwysig, efallai'n meddwl i chi i lei arno i bwysig, wrth i'r hun byddai'r dos i'r boblol, ac i'r boblol i'r boblol. I'm very excited to welcome our panel to the stage, not just yet, right? This is a very exciting, an amazing group of people, and in a moment you'll be meeting them. So we have Ken Hom, Angela Hue, Helen See and Andrew Wong. The chair for tonight is the brilliant Jeremy Pang. I'm going to introduce Jeremy and then he will introduce the rest of the panel. So Jeremy is a TV chef, a best-selling author and founder of the acclaimed Cookery School, School of What where I learnt to make dumplings. Thank you Jeremy. And you know him from TV, from Sunday brunch, Ray J. Fawr's kitchen cabinet, and he was also on television last summer with Jeremy Pang's Asian Kitchen on ITV, and he's an incredible author, incredible person. So please everyone, a massive round of applause for Jeremy and our panel. I thought we had our own lion dance there for a second. That would have been nice, wouldn't it? I've clearly been given the tallest chair because I, well we won't go there. Anyway, good evening everyone. How are we all? Yeah, I'm excited. Ken's excited because I've decided to have a glass of wine for the night because usually I do a lot of talking but tonight it's actually all about the panel. I just sort of wanted to start with the exhibition Chinese in Britain because I have to admit I'm terribly uncultured usually and I'm not very good in museums or exhibitions. As I was growing up I never really stood last at any longer than 10 minutes but this exhibition really captured my feelings and emotions and I came when it just opened a couple of months ago and it was an unexpected sort of sense of nostalgia from other people's stories. I'm not sure if you guys have gotten that from walking through either today or when you have. And I think there's a couple of stories, if you haven't seen it already, the seafarers of Liverpool who, you know, a couple of thousands of them came over and then got deported back without really knowing that they were being deported and left their families with their children, their wives with their children and that was quite a heart-wrenching story actually to read. Another little artefact that I was admiring earlier when I bumped into Ken and Andrew was the Ming's restaurant Dole's house, mainly because everything was so miniature but so correct and precise, which again I think there's so much to it. There was also an artist, I think he's in the audience, might be in the audience tonight, who's come back a few days in a row to draw parts of the exhibition and has sort of dotted around asking for a little autograph on his drawing and he tested me because he asked me to sign my name in Chinese, which I had to practice on my sheet, it's right here. I think I've got it right, my mum's in the audience, don't say anything mum. Anyway, enough about me, I'm honoured to be here, I really am. There's a couple of reasons, mainly as a good Chinese student, my mother who is very much here, my tiger mother here in the audience tonight, which many of us I'm sure have had yourselves as well, would be proud I'd say because I used to come to the British Library once in a while during my A-levels and university to pass time, let's say, with my friends. More importantly, I'm truly honoured to be here with such a panel of stature. Let's call them the dames and knights of the British Chinese round table. They're all sitting right here, I'm not going to go in any particular order, but I am going to start with Ken Hom, big round of applause. Ken Hom, Obi, everyone's uncle, not just yours, Andrew. The legend of Chinese cookery, full stop, really. I've aided to say that. How long did it take you to decide which of your two books would be on that table tonight? Because how many books have you written? Oh my God, 40 in English. And then we've got Helen, Helen Z, MBE. Let's call you Helen, the sitting sister to us all tonight. An owner of the famous sweet Mandarin author of many books, but also of sweet Mandarin, which is more of a story. That's right, it's a biography. A biography about your family? Yes, about three generations in the restaurant trade. Right, and we'll go into that I'm sure more as we go through. Andrew Wong, more and more famous over the years for his two Michelin stars and counting. If you count how many times you've won your two Michelin stars cumulatively, how many Michelin stars do you have? It's not as important as your CBE, though. And of course Angela Hwe, who I believe you've already done a talk here. Last year. His eloquent, fearless words, I believe, represent us all in one way or another. An award-winning journalist, an editor from South Wales, and author of the incredibly honest and personal book, Takeaway Stories from a Childhood Behind the Counter, which I'm sure many of you have read, but you haven't, as Melissa said, with plenty of books out there. So to all you wonderful people, I welcome the panel. So we've got our brief introductions, but we're on a bit of a timescale here. So I think we're going to start with just a quick sort of before we get into the nitty-gritty of three minutes. Let's give it three minutes for each of you. Let's start with you Helen, because you're right next to me. And I love you to give us a full summary in three minutes of your own British Chinese life, why you're here tonight, and what impact the exhibition had on you whilst walking through the aisles. OK, that's a tricky one. So I'm from Manchester. Great to be here today. I was born in Manchester above Takeaway, and then I became a lawyer. I worked in London and Hong Kong, and then I moved back into the restaurant trade with my twin sister Lisa and Janet and my other sister. And we sat at a restaurant called Sweet Mandarin in Manchester about 20 years ago. Then we went on the show called The F-word with Gordon Ramsay, the good one, the good show, not the nightmare's. And we won Best Local Chinese Restaurant, and we beat 10,000 restaurants for that accolade. Thank you. So the Sweet Mandarin restaurant has kind of evolved into different things like the book, which was about the story of the family, the cookbook, which is predominantly gluten-free and dairy-free. So we're very much into the allergen space. You know, you go to a Chinese restaurant, and you say you're allergic to nuts, and they'll say there's the door. But we do welcome people with our allergens, and that's our specialism. And I came in to see the exhibition today, and it's very, very emotional, because it reminded me of my childhood, especially the doll's house, all the little bits that were in there, like the wok and the rice cooker was amazing. It's amazing how much you can fit in a small kitchen. Yeah, and it just took me back to my childhood days, and the really weird thing is when I was growing up in a takeaway, we really hated it, and we didn't ever want to go into food, so it's very ironic that I'm actually in the restaurant business still after 20 years. So that's me for now. Thank you, Helen. Let's go to Andrew. Let's go across. Mainly because I know you're about to fall asleep. Absolutely, Andrew. So, yeah, your own British Chinese life. It may be a different upbringing as well. Helen's sort of gone in and out of becoming a lawyer and then going into the restaurant. You've not always been in the restaurant industry, or have you? No, well, my parents had a restaurant. My grandfather had a restaurant in China town, and my sister and I, my sister who's in the crowd today, very talented children's author. We grew up not wanting to work in a restaurant, so it was always the trade-off. You either study or you go work in a restaurant. So she went to do a Masters and a PhD and everything, and I went to Oxford temporarily until I got thrown out. Basically avoid being in a restaurant, and that was always the trade-off. That was always the understanding, and we played by those rules, and that was fine. But while I was at university, my father passed away, and so I went initially just to help my mum out. Initially I went back because she had restaurants, and I thought, okay, I'm obviously under-qualified, but at least I've got two hands and half a brain. So I went back into it, and then the strangest thing is that actually, I look back now, and 17, 18 years have passed now, and I'm not quite sure what happened, if you'd be completely honest. Initially it was just like, well, we'll just make it up as we go along, and then one thing led to another. We closed a restaurant, Natalie and I reopened it again in 2012. We made loads of mistakes, I remember. The worst one was not having bin bags during the service. I'm looking at Saint's Visible. I was going to say you're lucky. I'm walking across the road to Saint's Visible bin bags. But no, I mean, there is no grand plan when you open a family restaurant. You just go with the flow, make mistakes. Hopefully you get blessed with a little bit of luck, and we did, and then from that we grew, and the team grew, and the cuisine grew, and the restaurant grew, and then, as I said, 70 years down the line, it's now this monster, with like 40 staff looking after 30 to 55 guests, and I'm not quite sure how it happened until the accountant reminds me of payroll. And no, every day, we all started, I remember distinctly, and Natalie and I only ever said that, wanted to create a restaurant that we wanted to go to. That was always the underlying mantra behind the restaurant, and everything that's followed from that has just been an expression of that. And you had a look at the exhibition today? How did you find that? No, it's touching, but in a weird kind of way, it's more poignant for me personally, because I'm sure a lot of people in the audience can relate to this. Growing up, you hear little soundbites from your relatives, your grandmother, maybe you have a great-grandmother, your mother, your relatives from Hong Kong, your relatives in England, and they tell you stuff, and you just go, how much of that is true? And then you come to an event like today, and you go to the exhibition, and you begin to piece together bits of these fragmented stories that you've been told over the years. And some of them you're going to go, oh, right, mum was definitely lying to me on that one. But the other stuff, you're going to go, oh, I really get it. My always one is I look at some of the pain and the anguish that my parents went through, and some of the baggage I used to carry with them and used to say things. And then you see it in black and white, like that in an exhibition, and it really drums home that, as a second or third generation ethnic minority, we have it so easy today in comparison to our parents and our grandparents and our great-grandparents. And I think, you know, I see it now, you know, saying that we have this restaurant, none of that is possible without the incredible efforts and the pain and the suffering that our ancestors went through in order to give us this privilege. And I think that's what stuck with me more than anything walking through that exhibition. I'm desperate to go straight to Ken, but I feel like we should leave him to last because he's got a lot more life to talk about. I'm the oldest one here. Angela, let's go to you next. Yeah, I'm from Wales. I grew up in a Chinese state of Wales, like Canada, and I worked there for 20-year-olds. My parents owned it for 30, and then I think I've worked behind the counter since I was eight. So I had a little stepper stool that I would because I couldn't reach the counter, so I had to be the stepper stool to serve people. That was when you were eight? I was eight, yeah. I had that when I was 20. It's true. In fact, it was yellow pages. We were working with me and my brothers. We worked with them all day at night, and mainly crack work would help out. We'd go to school and then work baging pool and crackers and doing the chopping chassis and mushrooms and stuff like that. I'm like Helen and Andrew. I hated working there because you just want to be a kid. You want to play. You don't really want to be stuck helping your family, feeling pool and being stink. You go to school and you smell like sweet and sour sauce and you get bullied for it. So it was just talking about all of that, essentially. You just wanted to do your own thing on your own path. So I think that's when I left, when I went to London to find a job. I wanted to do something completely different. So I wanted to do fashion and music and then realised everyone's horrible in those industries. And then accidentally fell into food and then realised I loved it and not realised it was actually an option or an actual job. So falling into food writing by accident and then ended up there. And then, yeah, that's how I ended up doing what I do. But, yeah, we'll go into your writing because I think it's really, it's weirdly seen as a bit of an alternative career path but it's such a crucial part to the whole world's education. So we'll go into that as we go. And the exhibition, what did you think about that? Yeah, I mean, I've seen it three times now, I think. It's like the dollhouse. It's just everything is like down to a T from like the flattened cardboard box, like the anti-slip mat when you work in the kitchen. The terracotta tiles. But I just love that there's actually an exhibition about the Chinese and British in the growing community. And I never really knew about the Cardiff laudermats or a lot of Chinese workers. They started out as laudermats, like running laudermats and then going into the hospitality trade. And then learning all about the Liverpool women's team and that we're like forcefully deported. So I think it's incredible that there's something there now. I would never have thought that would something to see an exhibition like that during growing up at all. So yeah, it made me feel really emotional similar kind of experience. It was kind of PTSD looking at that kitchen again. We all know who the Swat's in this panel. But no, it's just really heartwarming and kind of emotional as well to see all the amazing stories and the anecdotes and the collection of books and everything there as well. Unto Uncle Ken. Oh God, this is... Your British Chinese life. Yes. And you know, we've got three questions, three minutes. So you need to do this part in one minute if you can. But tell us about your life as a... As a British Chinese. As the oldest one here my life is very long. But it's been a comedy. It's interesting because my career has been over 40 something years. I was born in the States in America. I did not speak English which is my second language until I was six. I only spoke Cantonese. I became a hippie. I did smoke dope. I worked in my uncle's restaurant when I was young and I said, I never want to be in the restaurant business. I tried everything to get away from it. So eventually I started teaching cooking. It started to do very, very well. I was commissioned for my first book and the New York Times did two full pages on me. And my New York publisher which is the biggest publisher in America went from 2,000 copies. We're talking about 1981 to 29,000 copies and put me on a 35 city book tour. I met this young black girl who interviewed me in Baltimore named Oprah Winfrey. This is how long I've been around. I was interviewed by Martha Stewart at House Beautiful before she became Martha Stewart. Anyway, I met all of the glamorous people Americans of my career was taking off. Then I met a woman named Madder Jeffery and okay I was a mire of hers and I said, oh this lovely matter this was in 1982 and I went to France and I came back to my cooking school in Berkeley, California and I had all these telegrams. Remember in 1982, no mobile phones. I had about eight telegrams. Please call me English television want to talk to you. So I called it back. I said, Madder my career is just taking off and I'm getting all these big corporate things and why I'm finally making some money. She said at least talk to them. So make a long story short I talked to them. They've been searching for someone to do a Chinese cookery series for over two years. I interviewed 50 candidates. I said my English was not that good. It's okay. I'll get back to you. They flew me over for an audition and they said, we want you. Why? You can see my audition tape it's really humiliating. They released it for the 100th anniversary of the BBC. You can still see it. It's embarrassing because I have to tell you also the backstory of all this. All the time I was teaching about Chinese cooking. I was teaching at a school for professional chefs as well. So rather than just to be a cook explain why I did something. So in my audition I never done television before I was freezing. I was going like somebody said a deer in headlights but they said when you started cooking you explained everything so well and they said that evening the executive producer said we want you to do this but the money Americans they pay big. I said what? Okay I said okay I'll do it for fun. I had a cookery school by that time in Hong Kong as well I was taking chefs and people to Hong Kong in the month of April and October etc. So BBC thought this is a great work film. I never thought okay I'm going to do this series it might be a flop especially the cleaning lady who came in the small flat that BBC rented for me and she would say what's that Chinese muck I smell and my friend said this is not going to fly so I thought okay I'll do this series it will be a lot of fun I really love London I love the English people and I fell in love with fish and chips don't tell anyone I love fish and chips Anyway I really got to this took about 8 weeks we have filmed in Hong Kong etc. Well when the series came out in 1984 don't imagine many of you were around then no it was the biggest printing of a book at that time 350,000 copies the book was 26 weeks and the best seller I couldn't believe it but I was so mortified and traumatized by doing the series that I could not do another one until my wonderful producer came and said Ken we don't have to do a studio we can go out you can be yourself and you don't have to learn lines I remember they gave me a cassette did you remember video cassettes they said it was of Dia Smith they said we want you to be like this I said I don't do drag I'm sorry I mean I know I had long hair but and I can't talk like that why is that not in the exhibition I wonder let's talk about the exhibition what did you well you know I was very touched by it because I knew a lot about Asian American history Chinese American history so a lot of the exhibition here was a mirror of what was happening in America as well and I was very touched by it so what you're saying is that us Brits can't think for ourselves let's move on a little that was a very long one minute but you know you've answered quite a lot of my questions already so I think we're going to touch on it coming back to the rest of the panel and my next question is more again about your personal journeys and I'm going to start with Angela because you talk a lot about this in your book which is of course hugely personal to you but perhaps resonates with a lot of BBC's here in the audience did you actually see yourself as Chinese from a young age you were born in Wales right well I would say I was quite lucky and privileged my family were very very traditional very Chinese we spoke Cantonese at home and all I spoke was Cantonese so before I went to nursery I couldn't speak to anyone because I like to speak with Cantonese and at home we would watch TVB which is a Hong Kong channel I watch Chinese cartoons every Sunday we'd go for dim sum and we'd go to Chinese school so I was really lucky that my parents always made sure that we never lost that kind of Chineseness to us and every other year we would go to Hong Kong and then working in the Chinese as well being in this very Chinese environment but also going to a Chinese restaurant and then going to school in a very very white school where me and my brothers were the only people of colour and it becomes very jarring and then you don't really see any peers you don't see anyone that kind of look like you so I was very confused was I Welsh, was I Chinese I wasn't really sure who I was I wanted to so badly fit in but you know working in a takeaway you kind of have a target on your back immediately the Chinese one or you're called something very racist so yeah it was very hard growing up because I never really had anyone that I could really turn to that wasn't like a friend or like a family and it wasn't until I moved to London that I really realised like oh there's other Chinese people that's not my family and because there's such a small tight-knit community I think it's like where I grew up it's like a population of like 4,000 people there's barely anyone there so when you come to like a place like London it's like a metropolitan city that every walk of life is here so I think it wasn't until like after I moved away that I really needed that to be surrounded by other East and South East Asian people and it wasn't really until like the last I would say like the couple of years it's like the pandemic happened I reached out and met a lot of people like online who felt the same things I went through all this like anti-Asian hate and we kind of bonded over hate really but just coming together of like a crisis or bonding over things that are outrageous or the same things that we were really frustrated by and it's amazing to have this community that feels the same for something that I never had growing up so yeah it was always very torn I'm not really sure who I was or was one of the Welsh or Chinese but I'm not really a fan and would you say that was relatively recent that sort of bonding over anger well I think in the last couple of years I was all fired sorry I should re-word that but you know but like the same you know the same things that you care about you know you're passionate about wanting to be seen within representation and film and media not being depicted by Covid how you know the pandemic Asians were kind of painted in a bad light because we were kind of the carriers of the virus so you kind of bond over that and you know you feel the same passions that everyone else like a lot of other people do and thanks to social media there's a lot of that that we kind of rally behind so yeah I think it's like in the last you know five years I would say I've started to really feel really understand who I am and become more comfortable in my own skin than I ever have in my last like 20-odd years of growing up in Wales that's fantastic really personal perspective Andrew you've grown up in London but one of the things that intrigued me because obviously if you don't know that the sort of I guess the Chinese community movement from Limehouse area and you know in London towards Soho you know the restaurant sort of started opening up in Soho you said your granddad owned a restaurant in Chinatown or around that area before on Gerald Street why did your parents open in Victoria because my granddad said that's my spot don't competition that's a summary of chef's life or the summary of how the Chinese really are my dad had a very interesting interaction with that whole period from the 70s to the 80s where he was first of all a publican in the East End great stories about that time his car got set on fire three times for refusing people drinks people were going with hammers and smatches around the head and this was why my grandfather was having his restaurant in Chinatown and then my granddad moved to Hamburg because he had read in the newspaper that there was a position to be a middleman for the trading between the Chinese in Hamburg so he flew over to Hamburg to try to expand his horizons ended up finding a nice small hotel ended up taking that over and running that for a few years leaving my mother to look after my sister in a pub in the East End with a gun probably and then he came back and wanted to open a restaurant and obviously my grandfather had a restaurant in Chinatown so he wanted to find an area which he thought would be good I'm not sure why he went to Victoria but there was this computer shop which was coming up for Cell and he decided to camp out for a year to do research on traffic flow on this high street in Victoria and until they were ready to sell and then he opened the restaurant in the early 80s opened in 1985 so he worked out how many sandwiches he might sell and he went for it I'm genuinely intrigued by this because that opportunity that he created for himself your dad I think has that set you apart in location before anything else for now we had Chinatown and then you've got Bayswater and then you've got A-Wong in Victoria do you think that's actually given you more of a chance well Marina in The Independent described the restaurant as being in a scuzzy part of London I didn't know what scuzzy meant in 2013 but I looked it up it's not flattering you know what the honest truth is that if I was not to open a restaurant in that exact location I would never have opened a restaurant you know growing up I was okay at school I'm sure there's a lot of you in the crowd we've got a few A's books I got into Oxford to study chemistry I got into law school which just didn't show up on the first day so the only reason I opened a restaurant on the original site that Kim's was was because that we grew up in that on that site my sister and I used to get locked in the office and there used to be all the wine on one side so you'd have to get into the office and then there was a photocopier here and she's got our photocopy stuff so she'd stick me on top of it put my hands on it I don't know obviously why don't you photocopy your hands oh what else can we photocopy that's not good it's not that type of talk actually so that site had so much sentimental value to it that we grew up there we had so many birthdays there when my dad said he was going to take us to the seaside he took us to the restaurant and said go fishing in a pond that was in the restaurant and if it wasn't for those memories I don't think I would have ever opened a restaurant I probably would have I don't know sat in an office somewhere had an easier life probably so Helen you seem to have followed perhaps the more traditional Chinese child route in the sense that we all know that our parents they were in the industry and they wanted us to be lawyers accountants possibly engineers but not chefs when you were studying law and then when you became a lawyer did you know at that point that you were destined to be a restauranteur oh no definitely not I mean we opened sweet mandarin in 2004 and at that point I was a lawyer my twin sister Lisa she was in finance with all the stereotypical jobs and Janet my younger sister was an engineer you know I actually didn't know that and the three of us gave up the day jobs to the horror of our parents to open up sweet mandarin and when we went to the bank to raise funds nobody would lend us any money three 20s on things we're going to make it work so what we all did is we each sold our house and then moved back in with mum and dad to a even more incentive at this point they're like you bloody idiots and then we bought a plot of land in Manchester it was the back streets of Manchester also away from Chinatown because you can't buy in Chinatown and we built the restaurant so that's how we started the restaurant but that I guess the reason why we set up a restaurant probably stems back much further in my memory because I said that we're from three generations of women restauranters but I grew up in a takeaway so I guess there's one part of the story missing which is we actually lost the entire business before I was born and my grandmother and mother lost it to gambling which is a really difficult and prevalent situation in the Chinese community and it's probably not talked about at all but that basically ruined the entire family and it was always ingrained in us that this had happened but we were hopeless to do anything about it so when I was 11 I remember this very clearly but just like you we helped to take away finish school get into your overalls serve customers yes please and he's on for vinegar on your chips and it was one Saturday night and my mum was serving this in the shop as normal so dads at the back and at the front and this thug came in and demanded a bag of chips for free and my mum being very principle said no get out of the rest you know you're not being served and he punched her and she hit her head against the back of the wall and she slumped down the glasses were broken I was 11 at that time and I was watching it and I felt totally helpless but it was what he said afterwards which was like get out of this country you don't belong here all these horrible racist terms and being 11 I didn't like the fact that I was Chinese and being the only Chinese in our school I didn't like my flat nose I was reading Little Women by Louisa May Alcott and they were putting pegs on the nose to make it more straighter and I tried that every night and it was still flat there's anything for the next morning but I didn't know any other home but Middleton Manchester so whilst I was very insecure in myself and how I looked I was not doing well at school I wasn't fitting in this was my home where am I going to go you know go back to your home where's home, home is Middleton Manchester and I felt so helpless seeing my mum and a sort of taking place and we were helpless and it was that moment probably my crossroad that made me think you know what I've got to do something to train my family so then the three of you went into business well that's why I became a lawyer no am I right take my family but it was always this family longing to restore the family name so when we did have enough funds we were selling the house we built sweet mandarin it's an amazing story Helen and I think you know we can all take a lot from that I think that's part and parcel the exhibition for me resonates because you sort of read about the hardship and that's a big part of I guess why we're all here today I think let's move on to the next topic and that is what we all really do and that's British Chinese food so to get into the nitty gritty I think this is a quick fire round and the question it's a very short question and as much as possible keep it as close to a one word answer if you can where was prawn toast invented let's go back to you Helen I believe that you know the mantel bun in the north of China met with the fish and the seafood in Guangzhou and they put it together and they made prawn toast so you think it comes from northern I think two people came together it came from mantel, northern China I've never heard that one before but okay Angela gondom gondom hey listen is it invented? no no no definitely not hey Chinese are very smart they go look they said prawns how can we get the maximum out of this and bread toast we don't have toast where go on you're doing politics here so they said we're going to take this bread put it on fry it and I always remember well I was told non-Chinese people like everything fried actually Tesco told me that sorry you get royalties for saying Tesco no no no which country was it invented here the US I think probably the US Andrew the filling is definitely from Canton but prawn toast I think was invented in Walthamstow no no no you laugh I said it's your country I was talking to my good Robin and his dad invented crispy aromatic duck in the 60s he was the chef and the Chinese embassy who did a runner to come out and he realised that peaking duck was just too long a process to cook for every single person in the restaurant so they came up with crispy aromatic duck he definitely came up with that and he definitely came up with seaweed which is basically deep fried kale or a form of kale and I think crispy prawn toast may have been his one as well in Walthamstow any takers from the audience here prawn toast apparently was invented in Hong Kong yeah can you believe it as a fusion food of western Cantonese fare prawn paste and toast delicious what are your favourite British Chinese dishes Ken will go to you because you invented prawn toast definitely not chips with curry the first time I came to this country 52 years ago I went to Chinatown and they served chips with curry I said what part of China is that from you are bringing out Angela's anger right now so what's your favourite what's my favourite just a simple good well done stir fry of anything that's all ok which means hot enough the audience is suddenly very hungry Chinese are like the French they are such a pain they talk about what is wrong with this dish what's right about it they complain stop complaining eat it ok so stir fry for you let's go to Angela first of all you have to defend chips and curry sauce and is there anything particular Welsh Chinese that we perhaps should know about well in Wales they love fried things and in the chip shops are basically a lot of Chinese families they took over old Jewish fish and chip shops in the 60s that's why you get like fish and chip shops as well as Chinese takeaways and usually they were like customise everything so in Wales they would have a corned beef bowl bread crumb and deep fried corned beef bread crumb you're taking notes of your cookbook what are you doing over there another two to write Andrew that's a lot of content but you would have that in the fish and chip the window bit as well potato scallop potato wedge and then batter but usually they would have like half and half which is like a chicken curry egg fried rice and then chips much to your disney I feel like you shouldn't have sat you two next to each other this could get dangerous but a lot of people would when I grew up in the takeaway a lot of people would customise their own and make their own monster fusion so they would have like shredded crispy beef and chicken and then curry sauce on top egg on top wow the Welsh are creative Andrew let's go to you can you bring yourself down to the rest of our levels let's talk prawn toast and what was it corned beef let's call it corned beef do you have a personal favourite I love all food all Chinese food whoever has cooked it it makes no difference to me whatsoever and I do think actually I know you want one word answers for this no no no we're good to talk now you're good to talk now I think a lot of the time people latch on to this understanding of it's authentic or it's Welsh Chinese British Chinese or whatever it is primarily I think and again this is just me so don't quote it as being fact a chef's job is primarily to use the ingredients as available use our skill to interpret it in a way that is true to us whether that's in our heritage or our training or whatever it might be and it's to feed the people around us and I think sometimes people misunderstand well they forget this and they're too busy putting things into pigeon holes to say oh it's not this or it's not this and you know my restaurant in all honesty is probably number one in the firing line all the time for guests saying it's this or it's not that you're doing this you're doing that it's not from here it's not from there that's great and I hope it makes you feel better but primarily that's my job as a chef my job as a chef is to be respectful to my heritage using my training and my understanding and celebrating what I believe is our culture in a very respectful and celebratory way back to your one word answer it'll probably be something like crispy and matted duck I think it's iconic that dish has gone back to Hong Kong it's iconic 10 years ago people were like what Hong Kong app what sweet and sour chicken ball has gone to Hong Kong no I've never tried sweet and sour chicken balls I had a building in renovations in a restaurant he was explaining to me about chicken and I honestly had to sit on very sorry Helen is that something that is you guys cook sweet and sour chicken balls specifically because there's sweet and sour chicken and then there's the sweet and sour chicken balls so in the takeaway we would do the balls that you talk about because that's the fish that's the fish batter you want so it's like it's a fish and chip batter it's a fish and chip batter so you have self raising flour or they wouldn't know the recipe self raising flour half plain half self raising flour salt water make it thick like cement put the chicken in and then drop it into a really hot oil over 200 degrees and what about the sauce do you have a particular recipe because we get this arsed this a lot over the last 15 years of running school we get this arsed this a lot I want it specifically like the takeaway from down the road I don't know where he lives the thing is if you put together any takeaways in restaurants there are is actually more than McDonald's KFC and Burger King put together but we do not have a unanimous brand one type so it's very hard to be exactly like your local takeaway because every chef has got their own version of sweet and sour like artist from dad and that's what I've got to follow but every sweet and sour does have the basic condiments which is ketchup and vinegar it's just what kind of vinegar what kind of ketchup how much sugar do you put soy sauce in a nut we don't we can't do that so I'm not going to tell him my recipe let's talk about it a little bit more with you Helen are there any old favourites in the restaurant that are absolutely the same now when you first started I've got to say the curry chips and curry sauce half, half and half so it's half chips, half curry, half so half chips, half curry, half rice this curry has been the same through three generations it is the curry that my grandmother made when she came on the ship from Hong Kong to the UK at the USS Canton and this ship took months in those days to come over here and it would stop off in places like Singapore and stop off in India wheel is way through all the way and every time she stopped she learned how the different curry were made so our curry has got like coconut base it's got the spices of India and then she made it her own because my grandmother was in high altitude so she was a maid to a British family that's why she came to the UK and they love spicy because they haven't really tasted it before and Mr Woodman he was looking after the utilities in Hong Kong and decided to come back to Somerset because he wanted to go back to British life so she made this curry especially for that family and so we keep the same tradition and the same curry even to and do you and your sisters like to eat that personally yourselves? I mean we have people when we're closing for Christmas people bring you know the margarine tubs the big ones they will ask for 20 for Christmas and they'll freeze it and they'll use it for the turkey it's perfect with turkey you know turkey so dry so that curry has been in the family I can't change it that's the only way a Chinese person will eat turkey to the whole panel there seems to be a divide between chips and curry sauce and otherwise I have some theories myself about British or influence that food has had from the Chinese to the Brits and the Brits to the Chinese so I'll give you one of mine my theories I don't know if it's true but it makes sense to me and it's ketchup Ketchup I genuinely believe that was it also light prawn toast invented in Hong Kong because fan care my Chinese is terrible so if I'm saying this wrong you guys can slap me in the wrist later but fan care tomato means sauce right so ketchup tomato sauce ketchup if you say ketchup in English you can't do it the other way round can you can anyone do that ketchup and then translate that into Chinese it doesn't work it just doesn't work that way that's my example to the whole panel let's start with Andrew and come all the way down is there anything that you believe is heavily influenced from one culture to another from British to Chinese food or vice versa again I don't want to sound like the pretentious one trying to over analyze it but I think all food is I think that people must understand that somehow Chinese food is one cuisine which is it's stuck in time and actually we need to look at food diachronically and you have to look at it over 3,000 years over 14 international borders China is the biggest thief or sponge of other people's culture and actually our cuisine or whatever whichever region of Chinese cuisine you're talking about is a combination of the Persian Silk Road the Ottoman Silk Road the trade coming from the west dim sum contains butter there is no indigenous butter in Chinese cuisine until it arrives in Guangdong right? what the main ingredients of Chinese food is chilies chilies did not arrive in China until the 16th century during the Colombian exchange so what are we talking about China as a cuisine has always been about bringing in all the very best from around the world and then from that you do the same so in the Forbidden City the emperor used to always all the very best chefs from all over China to cook for him in the Forbidden City Palace and then you start talking about kind of colonial kind of British trade and when they went into Guangdong to start trading with the British then I always used the story of it it's like the Wolf of Wall Street so basically there were these middle men oh well let me do some trade with you I can trade the silk for the spice or whatever it might be and they sent out the word to all the chefs around China going we have these new multi-million pound foreign traders in Guangdong now we need to bring our A game we need to try and show them food that's going to impress them and tell them to come back to trade with us repeatedly and that's the origin of dim sum when people talk about tea houses blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah the tea houses yes but fundamentally the principle that I always hold on to is that is the idea that there was a demand and from the demand we bought the very best knowledge from all over China to create something truly special which has then been shipped out again to the rest of the world and has almost become an iconic part of our culture in other people's cultures yes I would agree very much with Andrew on this because it's adaptation that has made Chinese food one of the most popular in the world there's a book that is out called Have you eaten yet and it's a documentary where this guy he's from Canada, he was from Hong Kong he went around the world filming Chinese restaurants and how they not only prosper but survive is because they've adapted they would take indigenous things I remember you know when I went to Helsinki they asked me to stir fry reindeer okay it's like a piece of beef but the ability to adapt right this is what made Chinese cuisine survive around the world and Andrew was right what's authenticity authenticity is that does it taste good is it cooked correctly and at the end of the day that's what counts Angela basically what Ken and Andrew were saying about adaptability I think that's why I think Chinese takeaways they don't get the praise that they deserve a lot of our parents generation grandparents generation came over and cooked Chinese food but they adapted what Chinese food was they probably couldn't serve Fong Dao which is like chicken feet and dim sum menus which would probably scare a lot of people off so yeah they adapted a lot of the food to local tastes to use like that how stir fry chop sui was invented it's just using what was available and yeah what is chop sui it's just like mish mash like odds and ends of like everything left over you you talk about it on your book but you guys you called it something else we had it at home we called it four seasons four seasons I'm sorry everness marketing right there no it's because we adapted it to whatever we had so I think a lot of dishes like chop sui is using what was around so during the end there wasn't a lot of abundance of seafood and pork so they would use a lot of tinned items so that's why bamboo shoots and water chestnuts and hardy vegetables onions and peppers that's why a lot of them are used in Chinese takeaway cooking so again it's like this adaptability to local tastes of what people like if you've got good wok hay then you can kind of cook whatever you want but what I really find interesting is similar to like ketchup I guess that's a very Chinese sauce but there's have you heard of ok sauce ok sauce yes tell us about ok sauce this is fun ok sauce is a British sauce which is made by Coleman and I think it was like in the 60s and it's kind of like brown it's almost like a sweet and sour sauce but it's like brown made from like raisins and shallots and you would have it with like crispy beef and I find it really fascinating that it's kind of the way around which was like a very British sauce that was made in the post war and it's adapted to the Chinese market so now you get it in Chinese supermarkets there's even Chinese words on the bottle that says like sweet and sour sauce even though it's all Coleman so I find it really fascinating that this like you say it's just adapting using what's around and basically taking on everything like a sponge so yeah ok sauce is used in a lot of Chinese takeaways so it's almost like a plum sauce sweet and sour sauce but it's brown not very appealing there's a few sauces like that aren't there there's Worcestershire sauce also used quite a lot then there's other sort of canned products you know like the soup the Campbell's soups or condensed milks like you know all those sorts of things that you're finding like the chachantengs in Hong Kong still what about you from a Helen like is there anything that sort of jumps out at you that is like you know particularly influenced from one culture to another no I think there's you know we've kind of covered quite a lot of bases already I guess what we're trying to do is do an extension of it to deal with the allergens so you know the ok sauce and the sweet and sour we make it without gluten and actually we even sold it back to China so this is the sauce range because for those who don't know like Sweet Mandarin had their own sauce range for quite a few years for how long did you run probably about eight years and that went into all the supermarkets yes they were in all the supermarkets and they went back to China and premier Lee heard about it and said who were these girls selling the Chinese sauce back to the Chinese did you get summoned well he came to the UK to do his grand tour and then my sister Lee said she got a call on Tuesday and it was David Cameron and he said premier Lee's coming to the UK and he's asked to try your food because we want to know what's going on with this sauce why are you selling the sauce back to them he's like he's trying to steal their recipes so that journey must have been quite stressful like was it good did it work going into the sauce market especially the free from sauce market the free from sauce that's a really modern sort of way of thinking it's not something that you would I thought about it and my business partners wanted me to do I just didn't have the confidence to do it to be honest there are big giants in that industry what made you do that well a lot of our customers are celiac which means they can't ingest gluten and wheat then we have a lot of dairy free people nut free so we were already doing these sauces without all the other extras and then one guy said look can you put it in a bottle because I want to take it to Cambridge for my mom because she's also celiac she's granula and Lisa was like okay then another customer he's like I make labels do you want some labels in exchange for the sauce okay we'll make some sauce so that started off and then some of the corporates that we do said look we've got these end of year parties for the stuff do you want to have a stall a charity and sell your sauces so we sold it they're all gone so that's how it started then my sister so today I'm standing in for Lisa because really she does this kind of chat not me so I apologise but she is very business savvy so she said look basically BBC moved to Manchester so a lot of producers come to our restaurant and one of them was doing dragons den we're like we just can't get anybody to do it you know can you come on and do your sauces at least it was like I haven't got any bottles I haven't got any labels don't worry we'll knock it up so we literally stuck it on for the TV you didn't have sauces before dragons den not in that bottle you know those curry tubs that's how we sold them I should have gone into business with you guys that's amazing so we went on dragons den it was in Say's Breeze Tesco you name it so we got it was good fun now the thing is you ask a lot of the mainstream sauce people where you make our sauce they can't guarantee it's gluten free and I wouldn't put our name to anything that we couldn't promise to because them as an absolute number one if I can't do it I won't do it there's no point dabbling and then getting it wrong because with celiac disease if you ingest any gluten it's non-repairable you can't take a headache tablet and it's gone you've damaged the intestine for good that was too much weight on our hands to risk it so another plunge we've got a factory started the sauce business we went to all the shows like a nougat for food and drink Sea Al in Paris and we started selling the sauces by the palette load and then we even had a call from Russia one of the top supermarkets saying can we take your sauce I said to Liz I'm sure this is a spam they ordered 20 pallets there and then and that was a lot of money to output before we get the money in so using the lawyer brain I said yeah we can do that but we want payment up front and they said no no we don't do payment up front because you need to invoice and then we'll pay you invoice you no money no sauce so we invoice them we got the invoice in first made it you know rather than 28 days with the 7 days got the money and then we shipped it out so that's how we protected ourselves with the people that we didn't really know it's a very hard business to do with supermarket it's completely different isn't it between restaurants and supermarkets it's a big round of applause for them we've been there done that and taken the failure and that is well done to you guys I think the last bit that I wanted to touch on was moving more towards the future of British Chinese food I think we've talked about what we like what we don't like we know Ken doesn't like curry sauce and chips but the Helen because we're talking about the sauces from a mass market sort of Chinese food perspective perspective do you think taste buds are changing I do I think a lot of people are asking for more spicier sauces so Sriracha became very hot very hot property as well as well as the hot sauce and we noticed a lot of customers wanting Sichuan dishes literally laden with the dried chilies so you know we adapted put a few of them dishes on for them but I think in any business you've got to be flexible and be able to listen to your customers and hear what they want this is all I offer and nobody comes in it's been very difficult during Covid and it's still difficult now with the rising utilities and the wage costs and all the other costs that are going up but if you listen to the customer not just the food but also the service and the whole ambiance and whatever they say to you if you take it in and don't take too much offence I think you can survive you know I do agree with you it's changing it's changing quite quickly in the last years to be honest Andrew Helen mentioned Sichuanis food and the oil and the chilies you've done quite a lot of travels around I know also that you've studied quite a lot or you've worked with cultural experts around the history of Chinese food are the changes that are happening how do they link to history well I think the changes in food are a reflection of the changes of the community in whatever area it is so my restaurants in London so I can only speak about London my kids go to exactly the same primary school that I went to so I see history transposed unto itself and I see a lot of change if I compare the way that I interact the way that my kids interact with their Chineseness it's completely different when I went home at night I was like I am definitely until my sister joined later the Chinese kid in this school when someone described or when I described another member of my class first thing you notice was he's Chinese or he's black or she's Indian when my kids come back home and they're describing their friends the first thing they always talk about the person who likes this or the person like that or the girl who's fantastic at maths or whatever and I think that's a reflection of change I think things are changing change takes time you need to have people who are willing to stand up and make a stance people are a lot more daring and a lot more gutsy than myself but change takes time I look at the way that the Chinese community the way that people interact with our community the way that I go to Siwu now, I go into Chinatown now and it's such a different mix of people there's a Chinese shop round from where the restaurant is I see loads of kids from all different backgrounds going in to get bubble tea eating nori siwi man, when I was growing up I saw one of my friends eating nori siwi I don't know what I would have said ordering different dishes from all over Asia embracing parts of our food culture and that is an entry into our culture and I think that as a symbol of the movement that is happening in London I think it's very heartwarming and I think that the food as we describe it, you're talking about the chain that is basically the gateway to a lot of people interacting in our community and I think it's such an honour to be part of the Chinese hospitality community purely for that if anything and I feel that as time goes on what we will find is that more and more parts of our culinary heritage will be integrated into mainstream cooking understanding you know all the techniques that Ken promotes in one of his 40 books they will just become mainstream part of people's repertoire when they cook at home and you know I hang around with loads of chefs and they're always asking how do you make a tassel bar how do you make siwiolg those techniques are very specific to our culture and the fact that chefs who are not from our culture are trying to learn these techniques and trying to integrate it into their own cuisine it really goes to show the magic behind what we have to offer and the historical heritage and the richness that these techniques hold and I think once that becomes part of their mainstream repertoire then you know it's free for all it's open knowledge for everyone it's whatever you can do with it whatever you can do to integrate it into your own cuisine your own cooking your own availability of the ingredients and I think that's when you're going to really see this special magic happen all over the world Angela I'm going to come to you after the applause I'm going to come to you because Andrew mentioned making a stance and I think you are very quickly becoming a voice to the people in many ways with your writing there's a lot of talk around adaptability perhaps trumping authenticity in some ways where do you see the future of British Chinese food going and how do you see education from your writing or similar writers to yourself helping with that yeah I mean kind of what Andrew said it's like you have this kind of gateway right so when I grew up a lot of people's gateways was probably like Chinese takeaways and that's kind of the introduction to it and they would find egg fried rice and then they slowly learn from that learn from my go I really like egg fried rice with chow mein and then they want to try to learn more and then open up the palates and I think that's great I think from there there's a lot more regional Chinese cuisines now if you look at Chinatown you can probably get not just Cantonese food anymore it's like Cantonese food it's like Hunanese here and Oiga and Sichuanese and I think like Helen said people just want more spicy things but I think it's this acceptance right it's kind of you break down the walls of something like oh that's really exotic or that's really weird or it smells funny once you get past the barrier people want to learn more about the cuisine or the history or the pathways or how it came to be and I think once you kind of get over that it becomes normal what Ken and Andrew were saying it becomes part of our conscious they're like oh that's everyone will know what wok he is eventually or everyone will know what bitterness is different palates or different textures or become kind of normalised in a way so I think it's like as long as we kind of keep sharing about it or talk about it differences or defend when things are wrong that's how we can kind of grow and learn from it I think great and Ken I come to you for a bit of a summary really because you've led the industry as you've quite rightly said to me since way before I was born and Chinese food has changed a lot since the 80s where do you think it will go from here well only for the better just like food in this country it's going the way Andrew said global what I mean by that is we're learning about other people's culture we're accepting other people I'm I mean it's not all perfect it's three steps forward and two steps back but we still advance by one and I can see that in this country for instance the quality of what you're getting people are much more demanding I thought it was very funny when I took the a taxi to come here I was talking to I love talking to these drivers these black cab drivers and he said he's a five-year-old girl and she's always asking for sushi I said does she know how much it costs I mean five-year-old and I mean this guy is he's he's sophisticated enough to know food and etc but his five-year-old is asking for sushi and she said she's in love with sushi and that's fantastic and that's how the world is changing it's all these young people that grow up with food of the quality that Andrew makes of what you teach in your school what Helen does and what Angela does in her books you know all these kinds of things contributes to the knowledge that we're all a masking about food and we're all mixing it together but for the better it's not chop sui it's very distinctive and we can only profit from it so that's great for everybody so I see the future as pretty bright well it's it's genuinely been fascinating this discussion especially because we have these four wonderful panellists to me what I've taken from this is that I think today we've gotten quite a lot further than just egg fried rice, sweet and sour pork and crispy chilli beef but I think that they're very important parts of our cultural heritage and that there are a few words that I've sort of written down and that is that from the panel's perspective British Chinese people are very adaptable, creative brilliantly entrepreneurial and most importantly always ask the question does it taste good this is the time for you guys so I think we're not bad about ten minutes behind where I wanted to be but it's a question and answers really you've got this amazing panel here so it's any questions that you guys have for the panel now is the time people loving this online by the way I'm Maxim, I'll be asking online questions Viv is definitely trying to start a fight she's taught a lot about north south divides and ingredients but her key question is team rice or noodles pick one well we know in Chinese there's a saying if you're a rice you're a rice bin if you're a rice person a phan thong phan thong are you rice or noodles I'm rice I'm noodles I really hope Ken's noodles just so that we don't have another I have a reasoning for it because it's like instant ramen instant rice is just crap right you can't get good fried rice these days Ken rice or noodles I'm torn you can't get torn noodles I dream about both of them that's cheating Andrew noodles but I'll give you one again I'm the one you're going to tell me to shut up the Chinese government basically now recently decided that rice cultivation is highly economic is unsustainable and they're trying to change the whole of China to eat less rice and more potatoes so I don't know you asked this question ten years time what it should be is noodles or potato chips basically potato noodles okay great any other questions you've got one here just quickly for Andrew first of all deep respect I've been to your restaurant from the best food experiences I've ever had thank you my question is around I also went to Kim's your family's restaurant 20 years ago and obviously interacting with the different generation between the first generation what do they think about your take on Chinese food that's a load of questions I think primarily my mum looks at the bank account more than anything as long as you can pay for my retirement you can do whatever you want but no I think my mum's very open she eats out a lot and she will pull me out she's very harsh she used to be harsh on my great card and she's harder on our food but ultimately I always take this as my comforting semblance basically when she goes out to meet her friends now she can tell them that I'm a chef he's still deciding he might go back to law school he might go back to study chemistry now he's a chef so I must be doing something right another question just here let's talk today about more people accessing food including people from different cultures I'm just really curious food being inclusive mean to you another big question being inclusive what does food being inclusive mean to you let's go to you Ken well I think you can't be anti Chinese if you love Chinese food in other words I think to be included I always remember working in my uncle's restaurant when we had all these different types of people who were not Chinese coming to eat and you could see the minute they ate something good that was Chinese you could tell they're not going to be not racist but what I mean, you know what I mean the way they look at you et cetera and you could tell right away and uncle was very smart he gave free free meals to the coppers free meals to the coppers so but the answer is get the police in vote so you want to include people through your food anyone else want to add to that Ellen well I think there's many things in this world that divide people but one thing that does unite is this food and it's like through eating food you appreciate your respect you gain insight into the culture and I would say also that nowadays there's 14 allergens that we've got to adhere to as restauranters and chefs and you know to be inclusive is to be mindful and respectful of that a lot of restaurants still don't want to entertain the 14 allergens but we actually go out of our way and the cost base is higher so we don't charge a separate pricing if you're gluten free versus mainstream that's what I mean by inclusive it's making it equal and price wise making it a lot more accessible and knowing that they're safe as well Angela we'll come to you on this as well because you talk about it in your book around your friends coming to the take away when you're younger things like that how did your friends take that coming to spend time with you in the take away because you were so busy there they used me from prawn crackers really no I think it's yeah like Helen said it's like an accessibility of it right it's just like learning to be able to like go into a place and not feel overwhelmed and you're scared which can be quite overwhelming especially when you go to a Chinese restaurant the menu is massive so it's like where do you begin so I think it's able to have that accessibility and be able to be safe with your order and you can order whatever you want without finding something else I don't know but yeah I feel like with my friends when they would come over yeah they would always come over for egg fried rice or special fried rice and they would just help and order and they would come over in the day when we were prepping my friends would sit around the floor and like peel sprinkles wrappers as well yeah I think that's many more I have heard about in place did we include not dissimilar to getting children involved yeah I'm sure there's a couple more questions I'm sure we can take here we go we've got a question here right here I can't see at the back but there are a couple of hands yes this one I have a question about food culture so I was just interested we talked quite a lot about specifics around food but I was wondering things that's surrounding you know like chopsticks you know the soup ladle the lazy Susan what parts did you choose to break into you know the new ventures and what did you choose to leave behind are we talking equipment specifically yeah I mean I guess you guys all mentioned the dolls house as being something very touching specific things there so was there anything in my new venture I'm definitely not having this or I'm definitely having well you know what I think the best thing about Chinese food which we have shared is about sharing in other words when you have the lazy Susie everybody can share the same food and people love that I mean I couldn't believe it when I went outside of the Chinese community and people this is my plate this year well can I try some of that can I try some of this and this is what's great about Chinese food we have five six dishes and we have bits of everything we share and I think that's a great fantastic trait that we've been able to share with people and you think that's something we should always bring with us that's it yes I've got one and that is to to get rid of the myth that only Chinese people can cook Chinese food because when I started school of what I used to go and do all my shopping in Longfong in Alburton and it was the vegetable ladies very lovely ladies they used to always say to me your business is going to fail I said that's not very nice thing to say but I did ask them why and they said well you can't teach western people how to cook Chinese food it's just not possible and actually interestingly I know we talk about the sort of racism from one way to another but it works both ways and I think for me as I'm sure everyone here on the panel agrees it's a shared sentiment that it's a very practical skill and one of my favourite movies is Ratatouille for the reason that if you know how to cook whether you think you do or not that's one of the things I would leave behind any other there's some questions at the back let's find someone at the back so many questions we've got two minutes left so let's make it a quick question hello here I am up here to your right hello my best job when I was a school boy was in the Chinese takeaway I communed between the front where she served and the back where he cooked and I carried the tab back to the kitchen and then the produce poured to the front and he'd learnt to read the Chinese characters whilst I was doing it this was 50 years ago where were they catching the ingredients from have you been to the exhibition no your answers there we'll take one more question any more answers hello my grandparents used to grow bean sprouts in the bathtub which is why I couldn't shower that's one of your answers there were no bean sprouts until Peck's Dad from Sung Lee started to produce them in mass for the whole of London which is when Princess Fergie got married it's in the exhibition is that part of the exhibition there's something around that in the exhibition but definitely worth having a look at there's this whole story around that hello you spoke a little bit about authenticity and especially the limitation of that the ideas around being put in a box that's not how it's supposed to be do you think that there is any role for authenticity maybe that's not the right word but the tradition and looking back at how it used to be in building and moving forwards I think authenticity you can go back to books even old Chinese books you see how something was originally conceived and made and handed down and it changes I always say this basically the innovation of today can become the authenticity of tomorrow it's completely it's on a sliding scalp it's for whoever's partaking in that expression to determine what is authentic and what is not authentic and I think the more you embrace that the less you give yourself a headache number one and number two the more you begin to enjoy the food for what it is you enjoy the food for a pleasurable flavourful experience you stop trying to overthink it going well that's from there that's from there I think we're not going to take any more questions I think to just sort of finish that off authenticity to me a lot of it's about authentic or traditional techniques around cooking that are probably more important than the finished dish because you learn the core techniques of any type of cuisine or anything at all and then you can create what you want but outside of that does it really matter so long as it tastes good we all don't care you don't agree okay well thank you thank you for finishing off this to chat if you don't mind panel I'll talk on your behalf on this because I think that a lot of this discussion has been around adaptability and actually I think that is a unanimous agreement between us the core aspect of Chinese food whether it's British or not around the world is that we are very very adaptable people and our cuisine and our techniques around the cuisine lend the skills that we need to be able to adapt over time that's what I believe the panel have agreed so on that a massive round of applause the food season thank you so much Jeremy for skillful, insightful brilliant charity Helen sorry no none of you are sorry sorry sorry Angela Andrew I can't believe I'm saying this Ken Holm we're really honoured and privileged to have had you speak tonight, thank you so much this is the beginning of the food season I'm just going to say three very quick things coming up food and farming and the future of food is essential with Henry Dimbleby and an amazing panel followed by eating for the elderly the pleasure, the difficulty the important subject no one talks about with Joan Baigwell you've got to come to that and then love it or hate it you cannot ignore it food and social media poppy o tull, ita marshrulovich and Chetan McCann those are just the next three then there are loads more thank you