 Right, so hi everybody. I'm Jacob Klein. I'm the current chair of the SOAS food study center and welcome to this special session of the SOAS food forum. So I'm sitting in the restaurant, the A-Wang restaurant in London near Victoria Station together with Andrew Wong, the chef and proprietor of the restaurant and Dr. Mukta Das, social anthropologist and food studies scholar. We have a rather unusual arrangement today for today's food forum. What we've done is that we've collected questions for Andrew and Mukta from our master's students on the MA anthropology food program at SOAS and also from students on Chinese anthropology courses in the Department of Anthropology at SOAS as well. And so these questions students were invited to ask questions on the theme of cooking Chinese. So before we get to the specific student questions, I thought maybe I'd ask Mukta and Andrew to introduce themselves a little bit and tell us about how you came to work together. Do you want to go first, Andrew? You can go. You can go. Because I always embellish the truth. So it's been a while actually. I started on the MA anthropology and food back in 2012, which was a game changer for me, a life-changing moment and I'm so glad I did. It set me on a really positive path. And at that point I wasn't entirely sure what I was going to do with it, but I quickly came to the decision I was going to actually start to do doctoral studies basically, to start a PhD with the same Fusili Centre. And so around about 2014 I changed my Twitter profile to acknowledge the fact that I'd gone onto the PhD program and I think I'd named myself an anthropologist of food and started tweeting some stuff from my literature review, the history, the basic history of Chinese food, etc. And I think that caught the attention of Andrew here, both my handle, anthropologist of food, as well as the bits and pieces I was tweeting out. And I think he kind of direct messaged me and we started a conversation. And I think from that moment, 2014 onwards, we've been conversing, I think, pretty regularly on these kinds of topics. I think that's my recollection anyway. I think that's pretty much true. I'm not sure if I instigated it or Mooc to instigated it. But I do remember that with everything that we've done over the past few years, I think it is centered around the fact that we understand each other and we get along. And I think that dynamic actually is really what keeps this relationship working in a very kind of positive, kind of fluid way in the sense that Mooc understands that I'm not an academic. I've been to university briefly, but I'm a chef by trade. And I don't think like an academic and I'm not punctual like an academic. And so she understands that at the same time, I also understand that Mooc does not a chef. And so it's very much about understanding each other's particular field and understanding how the other person perceives certain literature, certain terms of phrase and certain interpretations of events through time. Interesting. So there was a lot of interest from our students in terms of about both of you and your experiences growing up in and around London and how this has shaped your attitudes and understandings and approaches to food and food studies. And one question that came up from a couple of students was actually, what was your experience of growing up eating food in British schools? And how did that change over time, perhaps? Well, I can take this one for only because I'm a chef. I tell you what, this entire question is particularly significant, I think, in these kind of times in times where people are constantly conversing about cultural appropriation and the kind of diachronic nature of food through time. And actually, I think that, you know, when people look at the food that we cook in a restaurant, I always say that, you know, I am not an expert in Chinese food. I am an expert in a Wong's Chinese food. And I think that's what sets us apart. So what is a Wong's Chinese food? A Wong's Chinese food is my interpretation of Chinese food through its 14 international borders, through its 3,000 years, and also through my own lens. And what is my lens? My lens is one which an individual who had a father from Sichuan, mother from Hong Kong, and my grandmother cooked Sichuanese food at home. And at the same time, we were navigating Britishness in the 80s. So, you know, what does that mean? I mean school dinners means that a lot of it was kind of thinly sliced overcooked meat, I remember, and lots of gravy. And I remember for dessert-wise, and this is proven one of the things that we worked on, actually, this whole idea of British affinity to custard. You know, that is very culturally specific. You know, when you look at, when you talk to any Brit about custard, they automatically think about school dinners. But that isn't something that transfers through internationally. So when we made custard bund, Lao Sa Bao, you know, traditionally it's meant to be quite salty inside, quite grainy, and that's where it's meant to be. But actually, I made the decision to play on this kind of British affinity with custard and kind of modified a dish. And that dish, I never thought in a million years, but actually it ended up becoming one of the most popular dishes on the menu. And I think it's because it taps into that British-ness, and at the same time, it's very much still a dim sum. And so people still see it as kind of this dish that travels across this cultural bridge of Hong Kong and Britain in a kind of like fluid way. That's great. I hope hopefully we'll be able to get back to some of those questions around cultural appropriation and those kinds of mixes that you're talking about later on in the discussion. Thank you. Mukta. Well, it's a brilliant question because I guess what the questioner was trying to get at, and I think it's a brilliant question, is that, you know, there's something about school canteen food that goes to the heart of someone's identity, I think. It's kind of a formative experience, isn't it? And I think I agree with that. It was a formative experience for me to have British food in that context when I grew up like Andrew did in a household where we were cooking other kinds of food, South Asian food, vegetarian food largely. And actually the first moments of me eating pork was in a British school canteen and also custard and things like this. And so it kind of agitates feelings of belonging when we talk about some of our canteen experiences. It does kind of make you feel more British in those moments. And I think that's quite interesting. And Andrew's recollection of custard, we've talked about this a lot. But also just the idea that actually there's a kind of 80s, kind of 80s, a repertory of foods that I think are a kind of touchstone for both of us as we try and figure out what the British part of A Wang's menu is. I think that has kind of kind of keeps us grounded, keeps us keeps us, you know, kind of kind of keeping it funny, keeping it kind of light. There is a kind of, I think a kind of ironic play on words on play on the kind of foods that we experience growing up in sort of, you know, after or dining in which cases this is kind of school, school dinners is one of those things. But yeah, yeah, I think this Britishness of it, I think we kind of play on a little bit, don't we? And we kind of figure out where it fits in the work that we do. I think it's also important just to say that canteen food aside, we're talking about a time in the 80s where actually British food was kind of a laughing stock of Europe anyway, you know, the French were laughing at Britain at this time, you know, the Italians Mediterranean, we're just kind of what is British food? It's it's disgusting. It's a joke. And actually, you know, this idea of kind of modern British cuisine and now it's quite a revered cuisine and everyone's, you know, celebrating British produce and, you know, there's multiple mission star British restaurants now. That is something that's very much kind of 90s on which we're talking about the era of kind of Marco Pierre White, Gordon Ramsay, and everything that kind of came off that. We're talking about 80s, which is before that, you know, where everything was in a French used to call it was beef, and everything overcooked with incredible amounts of gravy all over it. That's really interesting. I mean, I've noticed part of that transformation since moving to Britain in the late 1990s as well. I mean, it's been absolutely astonishing. I find it really interesting the way that both of you are also situating a long and the work you do here within that context. And again, that's something I'm, you know, I think we can get back to later on in the discussion as well. It's really fascinating. Building on this question of kind of personal experiences of growing up in this country, or particular also more specific experiences, maybe about for Andrew growing up in the in the restaurant milieu. There were students who are very interested in a kind of in the question of how how chefs learned to become chefs. And I was wondering if in particular, if you could give us see a little bit about the relationship between what it means to learn on the job in a restaurant and also growing up in the in a restaurant environment, versus what it means to learn to cook professionally in institutional setting. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure. Wow, it's a detailed question. And I think that the major distinction that people need to make is that cooking as an act is something you can, you know, it's very easy to be taught, actually through repetition, muscle memory. But then there's learning your own palate. And I think that is what takes time. And that's things that is a lot more difficult to to teach. I grew up in a restaurant environment, I grew up in an environment where my grandmother was cooking citronese food. But at the restaurant, you know, a lot of our chefs in the 80s, they were from Guangdong. And so they cooked very classical kind of Southern Chinese food. And so that is really what kind of determined my palate, in a sense. And so so when I became a chef, and I need to say that I never really wanted to be a chef, I kind of fell into it. And then over the years, I kind of learned to realize how much I love it unintentionally. But the palate side of things is something which takes years and years to develop, to trust your own palate, and very simply to understand what you like and what you don't like. I think people in general are very quick to follow suit. So if 50 people say that, you know, blue mashed potato is the best in the world, then actually if you're the 51st person, you probably go, you know what, I agree that blue mashed potato is the most delicious in the world. And the idea from a chef, I think one of the hardest things to do is to make a very clear understanding of what you perceive to be delicious and what you perceive not to be delicious. And that has to be the starting point. That is something which takes a long time to learn. You know, the other stuff, okay, you know, you can work or in other kitchens, and you know, I grew up in a restaurant. So I was constantly surrounded in an environment where there were people doing certain techniques all the time. So you know, I kind of pick them up unintentionally as well. But that really is the easy side of things. The hardest side is understanding your own perception of flavor. So you also have an academic background both in chemistry and anthropology. I was wondering if you could say a little bit about that and how that's shaped your your cooking practices and understanding of food. People often ask this, and I got to say, like, you know, education for me personally was not really necessarily about subject matter. It was about fulfilling goals more than anything. You know, I went to university to fulfill the goal of getting a degree to make sure that my parents wouldn't disown me at 21. And, and, you know, when I look back now, and the fact that, you know, Muckson and I have done so much work together over years, I do remember actually, I don't remember 99% of my anthropology degree at LSE, but I do remember the one module, which is the anthropology of food. And whether or not that was because, you know, subconsciously, I'd grown up in, you know, around the environment. So it meant something a little bit more to me. But I do remember, you know, understanding the fact that, you know, this food isn't just food. It really is as much cultural as it is kind of biological. And it is there to be reimagined from generation to generation. And that's really what I took out of that particular course. And that's something that I question again all the time on a daily basis, because what are we doing in this restaurant? You know, we are not taking old recipes from old books, and we'll be maddened with recipes or from whoever's and trying to recreate them. What we're trying to do is find an expression of celebrating moments in time. And that doesn't, that isn't necessarily going to be factually 100%. But that doesn't matter. It's the fact that eating is so much more than just about being pedantic about moments in time. It's more about an expression. And because I understood that from an anthropological point of view, I think it's made my life so much easier when we work together. I think that what you're saying there segues very nicely into a series of questions that we had, we've had from our students, particularly concerned with the creation and development of menus and the way in which the two of you have collaborated on that. And one question that we had was particularly concerned with Mukda's research into the histories and cultures of Chinese cuisines, and in what ways this has shaped and helped Andrew's menu development and cooking, and whether you have any also concrete examples of that. And maybe Mukda, do you want to begin answering that question? Sure, thank you. That's a great question. And it's not a really easy one to answer. Andrew touched upon it a little bit. And Jacob's question to Andrew just now kind of, I think, grounds this a little bit, because when I work with Andrew, we have an inherent kind of very implicit understanding that what we're doing is finding this sort of intersection. And this is I'm drawing on your work, Jacob, when you taught me 20 years ago, this intersection between sort of continuity and change and structure and agency, right? This intersection of where the human lives. So I like to think of myself when I work with Andrew as bringing the anthropology bit into history, right? And so when we look at old texts and we look at sort of Chinese history in broad terms, you know, you, you, I have to know that stuff really, really clearly, right? I have to look at the spences of the world and work out all the sort of structural, the big stories. And then I look at the kind of social institutions, the kind of Rouse, the Ellen, Evelyn Rouskes, you know, the kind of social institutions are really kind of interesting kind of the human dynamics of these histories too. So I've got the big structure, I've got the human dynamics of those social institutions. And then I work with food histories, food studies, the Casey Changs, the HT Huangs. And then I kind of bring in a little bit more anthropological kind of, you know, the kind of the stuff that you know, kind of sits within that intersection, you know, how do humans shape the time that they're in and how does that time shape them, that kind of co-constitutive element, right? So that's the kind of work I do in preparation for any kind of conversation with Andrew, because I want to give him that level of agency when he kind of starts to construct his work. And because of his background, because he understands anthropology in that inherent sense, because he kind of also understands the chemical chemicals around food, he kind of gets that a lot of the work that we do is kind of constructing a kind of techno cultural part of this kind of history, right? We know that it's not all there. We know that the recipes kind of speak to some things, but actually, lots of things about those recipes are about human decisions around the technical aspects around the technologies that they had around those ingredients that they had and the kinds of ideas around taste and what tastes good. And so it's about giving Andrew as an idea of that structure, as well as an idea of the human agency around that. And it takes a lot of reading to get to that point to have informal conversations with him. But that's the kind of work I do in preparation for some of those, some of the questions that kind of arrive at my, in my WhatsApp at two AM in the morning. Great. Andrew, do you want to say or speak to that as well? Yeah, I think, I think. Booktube is absolutely right. She puts in a lot of work and sometimes she really kind of breaks it down into the bare minimum before she sends it to me, I think. And a lot of it's conversation to try to succinctly explain a lot of the reading that's going on before she brings these very succinct excerpts, because she also realizes I'm a chef and I don't have 20 hours a week to read through, reams and reams and reams and reams of text. But what she's also realized is that she looked to highlights, like the odd sentence here or there or the odd paragraph, which she thinks I'd be interested in. And nine out of 10 times, they really are the bits that I automatically like scan to. And then so as I flick through the text that she's been sending me, I'll begin to build a picture. And it won't necessarily be a picture of just that reading, but it will be a picture made up of other bits of text that she sent me over the over the years. And whether what she's talking about, I don't know, talking about the fact that Imperial banquets, you know, there's this constant sideboard of dried fruit and nuts sitting there. Or there's a fact that she's talking about, I don't know, the idea of dairy products in certain dishes. And so as I read certain texts that she's given me, at the same time, I'm trying to bring in all other texts, which I remember and I was particularly fond of during my times that she's sending me text. And I try and build like a proposal together of a dish. And a lot of the time I'll send back this, send this back to Mukta. And she will then go, OK, well, first of all, let's try and put it into a framework that makes sense, like any type of sense. Because my decisions are purely based on flavor a lot of the time, right? So it'll be all this text, I put it into a form, which, OK, for the most recent example would be sour cherry, preserved plum, some form of animal fat, what shall I say? Some dairy. Some dairy. And I'm trying to construct that into something. And so Mukta will then take that information and she'll go, OK, well, how about you look at it from this perspective? Have a look at this set of recipes, which would be related to preserved plum, for example, or it might be like, I don't know, blossom trees or whatever it might be, maybe connected or not so interconnected. And then I will take that information and I'll try and build on top of it. And then as you build and you build and you build, you know, sometimes it won't end up being a cherry dish at all. It will end up being a fish dish. But it's that process of just building and building and building until you reach a common ground where we think that it tells a story, number one. And number two, it's a plate of delicious food. Do you have any of, maybe you give us a couple of concrete examples that illustrate that collaborative process? Sure. I mean, we've had loads along the way. And some of them are tiny garnishes, so they're parts of dishes. I remember a dish that we worked on a while back, which I took off the menu recently, with this idea of trying to find a chocolate dish relevant to China. And so I looked at, did quite a lot of work to try and find some form of, some form of link between China and chocolate. And then we kind of looked into coffee and then we looked into bananas. And so she looked into kind of banana plantations in Yunnan. And then with that, we started to move into kind of black truffles. And so the end of it, I remember, was a cherry on the cake for me. Was her sending me some text about people running away and hiding in banana plantations during the Mongol... No, during the Han. And the end, I don't know how this came about, but it ended up being like this chocolate molten cake with kind of really stretchy Middle Eastern pistachio ice cream with dusted cocoa, dusted fermented black bean, and then these massive shards of kind of different textures that lay on top of it, made from rice paper. Yeah, I thought it was delicious, anyway. It was a delicious plate of food. And as I said, is it an exact replica of anything that we've read before? No, absolutely not. Is it an exact historical study of a specific moment in time? No, absolutely not either. But what it is, it's a delicious plate of food that is very much rooted in our work about China. Yeah, so basically, I think what I help Andrew do is have a some sort of bandwidth between this point and this point. What are the possibilities? And as you know, you know, especially parts of sub-tropical China, you have an endless variety of raw materials. And so what can you do with that raw material? What kind of time period can shape those decisions? And what's happening around socially in those time periods that might produce a kind of creative force within Andrew that kind of emerges that kind of dish. And so that's what I tend to do is kind of give him a bandwidth, a structure, a way of thinking of a choice of times and dynamics that then he builds on. And we have this bit of feedback. And yeah, I mean, I know that the chocolate thing is a bit of a bug there for me. But ultimately, ultimately, you know, he is creating food and there is, I don't go in and say, no, that's off the menu completely. You know, he is he's running a commercial business. It needs to meet the requirements of bats and entertain diners and taste good. And so I just give it a shape and and then, you know, layer it accordingly. So, yeah, I remember another example, which was what you were telling me, we were talking about wine in general, I remember. And we started to talk about the kind of the development of grape based wine, I suppose, the rice grape wine coming through Persia on one of the silk road routes. And that was great. So I thought, OK, well, that's good, because I don't have to use purely kind of Fadil Jal or rice wine for this dish. I can use something a little bit more kind of floral and also allows me to use grapes, which in Chinese cooking, you don't see it that much in grapes, really, which is good because it gives me a level of acidity and sweetness to add to dishes together with this idea of using wine. And then I remember you telling me that with these kind of version of these Persian excursions into China, there would have been these mass banquets of celebrations where they would have been grape. Yeah, Oasis Town. Yeah, grape grape based wine basically great piss ups, basically. And again, again, I had this idea of a banquet, these kind of big celebratory bits of meat that you normally would custom to being part of a celebration. And it ended up being like a rib that we have on a dish, which is a very, very expensive piece of pork with, which we then use kind of like various different garnishes from dehydrated pork skin. We use pickled grapes on top of it. And we use a little bit of particularly red wine in the sauce as opposed to rice based wine, purely for that reason. Now, can you actually taste it? I think you'd have to have a really, really, really kind of nuanced palate to taste the difference after that with that particular because there's so much sugar in it. There's so much star anise and there's so much other kind of dried spice in that dish. But for me anyway, the fact that I know it and the fact that I know that we had multiple conversations about this thing, to me, it makes the dish so much more interesting. And to me, it gives me a real concern, a set of bandwidth to which I understand that dish and it's rooted very much in my understanding and my learnings of China. I think that's brilliant. It really speaks so interestingly to the kinds of relationship between continuity and change. Between the structure of cuisine and kind of individual and collaborative invention as well. So absolutely wonderful stuff. Our students were also very interested, maybe so in menus as well. So if you move a little bit from flavor combinations and individual dishes to the concept of a menu more broadly, what kinds of things do you think about when you develop your overall menus? What kind of messages or meanings do you want to convey through the construction of those menus? Do you want to go first? It's up to you. Well, we, this is quite prescient because actually Andrew's work at the restaurant now is kind of the early stages of introducing a banqueting menu in the evenings. And this is kind of a menu where people can come and Andrew will send them dishes, I think 18 or 20 dishes all together and they won't necessarily, they'll know what's coming, but they won't necessarily, you know, they can obviously choose vegetarian etc. But they are basically fed as you would expect in an elite or an imperial household, for example. So, so, you know, we had some early conversations about that back in November or December last year. He introduced this for China New Year this year, so February. And so back in November, he was asking me about what he should think about in terms of constructing this menu, like what kind of like big ideas. And one of the things that we came up with was this idea of fives, a very important number in, in, in, in sort of Chinese history, you know, Chinese sort of philosophy as well, and Chinese food, as well as the, and he asked me for some examples of banqueting menus. And so when we looked together at a particular banqueting menus from the Qing dynasty, the final dynasty in China, we, we came across, you know, this idea of fives that were sort of banquets that were split into five movements or five sections. And then, you know, several dishes in between that kind of were a, they kind of played on this issue of fives in terms of bringing in different kinds of textures and flavors and, and moving these things in, in seasons. And so that kind of gave Andrew an idea of how to structure this menu. And so Andrew chose to structure the menu and sort of providing five sections or five movements within this, within his banqueting menu itself, and to start to mix together different textures and flavors accordingly. So giving contrast to the, to the dishes in each of these five movements as well. So those are the kind of big ideas we started with at the beginning. And then Andrew makes these decisions within that structure to then place particular dishes within it, you know, and the timing of them and how they sort of sit together. I'll, I'll pass on to Andrew to talk about the other decision. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Moog does actually write in the, in the sense that this conversation started, it started way back before like November, actually, because it's been, it's been, I've been thinking about for a long time. And I always probe her with little questions like in the middle, and I go, oh, how about this? Or how about that? Because actually an ala carte menu is actually, to me, not the correct way to eat a lot of Chinese food. And I think that I think it's again, I haven't, I'm sure Moog does actually answer this question before, but I might have forgotten the answer of this, this idea of this construct of an ala carte menu. I'm not even entirely sure if it was even rooted in, in, in China at all, or whether it was maybe a Western construct of going into a restaurant and, and looking through things and picking them one by one. And actually from a eating perspective, I think Chinese food in general doesn't lend itself to having dishes singularly. I think, and, and Western chefs are the most guilty of this is that when they think of dishes of food, they always talk about balance or flavor. So they talk about balance of flavor and balance of texture. But they always reference it in terms of individual plates of food. And I just think as a cuisine, Chinese food is so different that you cannot imprint that those parameters onto it. I always feel that the very best way to eat our food in particular is about having multiple dishes, having a spicy dish, a sweet dish, a dish that has more texture, a dish that has less texture, a little broth. And it comes with this idea of five, you know, the five, you can relate it back to the five elements. But then you can also relate it back to the five flavors, you know, the sweet, sour, bitter, pungent, salty. And so again, as Mukta explains more about background and around these banquets, I latch on to things like these five flavors, the five elements. I start reading things about confucius that I never knew from before. And as we build this picture, at the same time, we slowly evolve this idea of what would it feel like to be part of one of these occasions? And it's never going to be a banquet which is which is a replica of going to one of these Qing banquets, you know, one of these, you know, banquets of everyone over the age of 70, was it? Or the Feast of the Elders? Feast of the Elders. And I don't think it's about I think my job as a chef is about giving people the the experience and the emotional attachment of what would it have felt like to go somewhere, feel really special, get dressed up and get delivered and experience where, you know, when it arrives, you go, wow, there's like, you know, five or six different dishes all at the same time. You know, for you to pick at, you know, the conversation will ultimately revolve around how one dish works with another dish, how one contrasts another. And it's about creating that experience more so than going, well, the archives show that there was a double braised turtle dish together with a bear dish and and, you know, seven cold, you know, fish carpaccio is on the menu. I think that I think if we did that, I think that we wouldn't be able to express our work as well as the way that we do it, which gives us a little bit more creative freedom. And also, I mean, building on that, it's it's been interesting for us to kind of drill down onto a specific menu in the Qing dynasty and to ask questions about it. And to almost, if you like, using Andrew's kind of work in the kitchen and his menu to kind of speak back to the academy in terms of, OK, if this is a printed menu, and it represents work of a particular kitchen and the work of a particular diner, you know, what does it actually mean? How does it work in concrete terms? And so we we've had lots of discussions. We've had to tweak things as we go along. And Andrew especially has had to tweak things as he goes along to make these things work in a modern day kitchen. But also to kind of question again, well, OK, if we are talking about kind of strict rules around principles around balance and taste and five flavors and the five zappos and the five, etc. Then actually, a lot of this is invented, you know, kind of invented or creatively interpreted on paper. The recipes themselves are literature almost rather than a scientific writing down of what actually happened. And so we, you know, we kind of we kind of allow ourselves a little bit more freedom than the printed menus would usually give us because we I think we kind of interpret them as literature. And so we can then draw creative inspiration from it without having to marry ourselves to the actual printed words, if you see what I mean. I think what is even more interesting is the fact that actually it works better like that because number one, a lot of the texts that we work off are translations. And number two, the people doing these translations, they're not chefs a lot of the time. So actually, a lot of times I'll get them side by side. And there was certain terms, which are very chefy terms that people will use. But the translation doesn't work because it's as a as a saying, it's pretty meaningless. It might just be blanched. But as a chefy term, it's not just blanched. It's blanched in a particular way, or it's double steam in a particular way. And I think, you know, all the students are academics. So I think that's an it's an important thing to say that, you know, because of that, there will be nuances that are sometimes lost. And I think that's where I can help Mook to sometimes in the sense that we might read a passage. And it might be like, well, this, this, this, and this in 10 steps. And I'll turn around. And I'll just go, you know what, actually, the chances of it being constructed like this are probably quite low, because you wouldn't be able to make the dish like this. Actually, number five actually probably needs to come before number two, in order for this dish to to actually be functional and be be be a reality. Either because, you know, one part of the recipe was talks about marination. It makes no sense to do that later on. Or, you know, they're talking about some steaming process, which takes place before a double boiling process. I'm like, I don't I wouldn't see this happening in real life. You know, if they were doing it for a banquet, they might be trying to reheat the food. So I get why there is a double cooking process. But I would probably not put in that. And I think that is quite an interesting conversation for my and it's the only time really, where I feel like I can contribute back to Mook to his work. I suppose that be more kind of one directional sometimes. So a long as a restaurant has now been awarded to Michelin stars. Is that correct? Yes. So it is, you know, irrefutably a fine dining restaurant, right? Nobody would would would argue with that. But what does actually fine dining mean in a Chinese culinary context? Presumably in London, given the diversity of cuisines in London, there's going to be all sorts of different ideas about what fine dining of cuisine actually means. How do you negotiate between those different understandings and meanings given the diversity also of your customers in clientele, which you've actually already spoken about a little bit in terms of your move to the to the bank, the bank winning style menu. How do you negotiate between those things in your work? Andrew, do you want to be with that one? Sure. I think I think number one, we try not to ever use the term fine dining, because I think it's more confusing than anything. I think in particular 2022, I think that term in itself creates more problems. And it's very much a Western construct. And again, I've spoken, we've looked about this, I think China, Chinese cuisine is so unique in the sense that kind of very high end food isn't massively different to the food of the people. And so, you know, how how do you differentiate cuisine then, if actually it's all available historically to everyone? You know, if I compared to French cuisine, if you're talking about kind of royal cuisine, it's very, very particular, as opposed to kind of every day French cuisine. So therefore, if you talk about fine dining, okay, well, it's a celebration of, of, you know, Cameroor scoffier, you know, then that makes sense. But actually, even if you look at, you know, in 2020, if you look at roasting processes, for example, which, you know, those that we know for a fact that those took place two and a half thousand years ago from etchings and stuff that we've looked at, would they have eaten those in a palace? Yes. You know, can you go down to the, you know, the local Chinese takeaway and get some roast duck equally as delicious absolutely still yes as well. So I think, you know, because it's so difficult to navigate that I think this term fine dining really doesn't mean very much. The the fortunate thing for us in 2020 is that, you know, we happen to be the only two Michelin star Chinese restaurant outside of China, which means that actually we're in a very fortunate position. And instead of we get to make the rules, you know, and I would like to think that actually what we're trying to do is we're trying to make food delicious, but also thought provoking. And we do it in a way which I hope is respectful to my culture. And what is that? That's about kind of a level of humbleness, a level of care, a level of hospitality, which I think, you know, whether or not it's true or not is debatable. What I perceive to be Chinese-ness in me, which has made me draw particular importance to certain aspects of hospitality. And, you know, if that ends up being a definition of fine dining somewhere in the future, then great. But if not, if it just stays as being kind of our interpretation of the way we look after our guests, then that's also great too. Great. Mukta, do you want to add to that? Just to say that, yeah, I agree with what we what I think Andrew and I love to do is democratise this idea of this idea of where you would go for really excellent Chinese food, because we know that Britain, migration, all of these things, these dynamics mean that it's difficult to gauge price and experience. You know, what the skills you get in the kitchen don't map onto the price you pay at the counter or the price that you pay, you know, at the table. It's it's it's almost disjointed, you know, the kind of premium quality stuff that you can get compared to what you're paying for, especially around Chinese, mostly Chinese food in British cities. So we're aware of that. And what we try and do with we have a podcast every couple of weeks, we kind of put a podcast out. And what we try and do is we kind of look at the skills that Chinese chefs have to bring to their cuisine and to unpack that and to share that knowledge to other chefs, to other people who are interested in Chinese food or food in general, so that we can sort of explore the level of skill that is required, the level of technique, the kind of understanding of chemistry that is inherent in the cooking process in some of these classic Chinese dishes that Andrew is, you know, well versed in and others as well. And to sort of, I think, break open this idea that fine dining has to be in this kind of space. Actually, you can experience these skills by simply walking around and finding the kind of good Chinese food that you can find in lots of different places. And so we that's what we're trying to do, I think, is to kind of break open this idea of fine dining is being very located in these kind of white tablecloth situations and really situate it within the body, the skills of the chef themselves and the kind of techniques they bring to their daily grind. So that's that's the kind of what we're hoping to do. And that's what we try and do with the podcast and other things. I mean, it's an anthropological research in itself in trying to understand why Chinese cuisine as a cuisine has managed to find itself in the situation where it doesn't fit into any economical mathematics for running a restaurant. You know, if you, you know, because there are industry norms. And if you look at Chinese restaurants, they pretty much are always underselling against that mathematics. And that is completely a cultural thing. The reasons for I don't know. But you know, what we do try to do in a lot of our work is to try to celebrate the technique, as Mupta said, and try to get people to understand why why would you go to a three star restaurant in in Italy and pay 90 euros for a risotto, a white risotto. Yeah, at the same time, you know, people won't pay. You know, people will complain about paying 11 pounds for some one ton soup noodle where those one ton noodles have been bamboo bamboo made. So someone literally had to bounce on them physically for an hour. You know, it's a very specific recipe, which has evolved over generations and generations and generations. You've got a broth which is made out of multiple types of dried seafood with chicken stock, whole chickens, again, a massive expense. And then you've got these wontons, which are made out of, you know, shellfish, dried prawn powder, again, expensive ingredients. Yet you go to Hong Kong, you know, they wouldn't nowadays because of inflation, it's gone up to probably, you know, 50, 60 dollars a bowl. But, you know, what what could you be charging for that? If people were mapping onto it, their normal kind of acceptability of what they will pay for delicious food. You're talking about, you know, a setting price which would be multiple times more expensive than what it is being charged for. I wonder to what extent what you're involved in then is in some ways a kind of a didactic project in some ways, a project about teaching the world about what this cuisine is, what its possibilities are, what it's, you know, what what what what kinds of what its histories but also futures could be. It struck me very much that when you were talking earlier about your your recent introduction of a banqueting menu that in some ways that appears to be a kind of accommodation to the fact that you're actually, you know, you're you're selling your cuisines to a wide, a very diverse clientele, many of whom are not Chinese. And in some ways I would think of as as Chinese gastronomy to be a gastronomer in a Chinese context is precisely to know how to combine different kinds of dishes on the table, right? Know what things go well together. But in some ways what you seem to be doing is also to some extent maybe teaching the diner about that. This is what combinations are good. These are what kinds of things that work. These are the possibilities that we can fit together. Is that is that correct at all or is that kind of? I'm always a little bit skeptical about this idea of me teaching, getting but actually unintentionally probably yes. And again, you know, I don't take our privileged position lightly, you know, as I said, if we are whether or not we like it or not, we are a reference point for a gastronomy in an international city. Now, as I said, that's a very big responsibility. So, you know, in a in a in a world where, you know, it's very easy to to to message things wrong or be, you know, unintentionally inaccurate, I think, and it's very important that what we do is is respectful and what we do is celebratory. So so, you know, the banqueting example is very much about that. You know, we we tell people from the very first time that they make the reservation that, you know, if you're expecting 999 dishes as part of your your your experience, it's not going to happen. If you've done a little bit of research on the Internet before you come into, you know, Qing banqueting and expecting some of those dishes to be on your menu, you're also going to be disappointed. But we do hope that the very fact that we inspired someone to Google it, I think that in itself is the difference that we're making. Moog, did you want to add to that? Yeah, I think yeah, I think Andrew's right in that I think we we never set out to teach anything. But I understand I understand the term and I think what it is it is about allowing people the space to educate themselves about their pallets, what they, you know, to experience a balance of flavours and textures in a different way than they might be used to and to find out a little bit more if they want to. You know, I think it, you know, we kind of allow them a learning space, if I can say that for that to happen. And to acknowledge the fact that we're also learning too, like we we never really actually, you know, no dishes complete. There's always something more to add, something more to take away. And so we're on a bit of a process ourselves. And so feedback from guests, if they like it, if they don't like it, what they would prefer is also really important in that process as well. So I think we're all giving ourselves some space to learn a little. So as a final question for this discussion, which I think ties into what we've just been talking about, a lot of our students were interested very much in the kind of politics of cultural appropriation. To what extent it's acceptable for non-Chinese chefs to be to be making Chinese cuisine and selling that in Chinese restaurants and so on. And they were very interested in what you what your views of these kinds of of these kinds of debates are. I'm the best person to start this answer because I need Muck to support the answer because the simple fact is I don't mean to trivialise the question in any way, but I honestly I'm not entirely sure what what cultural appropriation is. I know what it is in terms of a definition. But the way that it is questioned in mass media. I find it very difficult to understand what people are referring to each time they are referring to from case to case. And every time I need to turn to Muck to and I go, am I just being really like culturally inept or or just culturally blind? Am I not seeing something? And I think sometimes Muck to is the best person to ask because she's not Chinese, but she's an expert in in in the field, which helps our work. And so she she perceives it from multiple different angles, which which I can't often see. Well, to be to be fair to Andrew, actually, he's so enmeshed in anthropology and history that he obviously questions the term itself as we've been taught to do by Jacob and others, you know, to actually like, what does that mean? What how do we bound cut? Why is it important to bound the culture? When is it important to bound the culture? And so, you know, we're seeing these dynamics play out here in London and other places and other cities and other contexts. People attempting to bound something. But actually, the work that Andrew and I do, especially when we take into account the richness of Chinese history and how much Chinese food cultures have been made by foreign influences and foreign ingredients and foreign techniques and and have, you know, kind of exported these out as well. You know, it's a really interesting task to bound Chinese culture into one thing, right? The Chinese food culture into one thing. And so Andrew's confusion is our confusion, is your confusion, my confusion, you know, it's not necessarily, you know, what are the results of it? But why do it? And so that's the kind of conversation we have. Is why is it important for this journalist to ask you? Why is it important for this person to ask you what you feel about this? You know, rather than answer the question itself, it's the question, the issue, you know, and why it's become important in this day and age. And I think that's and, you know, we and I ask him, you know, are you OK with sitting in a bit of confusion? Is it OK to be confused and to not have the answer? And inevitably, he'll say, yeah, that's fine. And so it's it is about kind of looking at these dynamics as complex and not necessarily something that. You know, needs an immediate response and to kind of question the issue of binding something or bounding something or bounding it, you know, having a boundary on something. Yeah, it's it's. Yeah, I think together with that point, I don't, although I do sit in a massive pool of confusion every time this issue arises and I do I do always. Make this relationship between the question that we're asking and this idea of ownership and you talk about bound. And whenever we talk about ownership, the things that I reference from our work is number one, when did chilies arrive in Sichuan? Because they're definitely not Chinese, no matter how much you try to find a really tenuous link. Potatoes, you know, I've read a few pieces where they have tried to convince that me that there are one or two strands of the potato family are indigenous to China. But I'm not entirely sure and bananas. And when when we talk about appropriation, I could always go back to this idea of ownership and if ownership is appropriation, then I think it's a very, very difficult road to go down. But at the same time, Muck to always tells me that, you know, China, as I said, is the biggest sponge of other people's cultures. So what it is today and the perception of what China is today really is just a massive like collection of of multicultural influences over thousands of years. Yet it's been painted as this this entity that hasn't moved through time. And so when I when I accept that and I look at China as a sponge, then I can sit a little bit better within this pool of confusion. And I think that a lot of people's problems within this confusion is the fact that they can't see China as a sponge. They see it as this kind of this immeasurable entity, which is just China. And I think that's where the real problem comes about. Nice answer. I think that's a wonderfully thought-provoking and anthropological way of which to end what's been a fascinating conversation. So thank you so much, Muck Dan. Thank you so much, Andrew, for this fascinating opportunity. And I'd also like to thank all of our students for their wonderful questions. It's really it's really been been a privilege to be able to talk with you today. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you very much. Great. And now Muck says she forgot to press record. No, you don't have a joke about that.