Inside the Kitchen: Seven Questions with Yingtao's Emily Yuen

I grew up in Vancouver by the ocean, so we had a lot of fun crabbing as kids and catching spot prawns, which are very famous for that area. Whatever we caught, we would barbecue it and eat it with my family. We were drinking our first beers there and everything like that.

When you see a fine-dining dish, it seems very simple and elegant, but what I think people don’t really know or think about is the 20 steps of what’s behind that dish. Like my superior stock: you eat that, and it tastes so good, but you don’t know why it tastes so good. It’s all the special chicken that we curate that we can’t find anywhere but Chinatown. It’s the 20 steps before it goes onto the plate that you have to think about. That’s fine dining.

Well, besides wanting to be the only Asian female chef to have a Michelin star in New York, it’s also changing people’s perspectives and minds about Chinese food. A lot of people think Chinese food is just Szechuan, and also that a lot of people do think like Chinese food is cheap, or only takeout. We’re trying to change people’s minds about that, and I want people to come in and eat something that maybe tastes nostalgic, but it’s done in a different way, that’s modern and contemporary.

I would love to go back to China to eat at different regions. Also, I would love to go back to Copenhagen. I was blown away by their way of life—I need to make way more money to live there, and even to eat there, but I really loved Copenhagen’s philosophy in terms of sustainability and everything.

It’s those 20 steps that you don’t think about that goes on before it goes onto the plate that is really important. The little steps could be pre-marinating or fermentation and things like that. And especially for Chinese food, there’s so much fermentation that goes into it.

My mom’s scrambled egg, tomatoes, and scallions over rice because it’s just something I loved eating growing up. I also ate a lot of Spam with rice and a fried egg after school.