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Hangzhou master famous, but still just a ‘cook’
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MA Kunshan became the head chef of Yan’an Hotel when he was only 19. In the 1990s, Yan’an was one of the best hotels in then Hangzhou city, and the young man quickly blazed a trail.
Today, the 45-year-old has grown into a successful businessman who runs a fast-food franchise, a noodle restaurant, and a traditional Hangzhou restaurant.
But he still insists on calling himself a cook.
“A happy cook who learns every day,” he said with a grin.
Most of the time Ma can be found at his Hao Shi Tang restaurant. When you see that smiley face with bright eyes moving among the tables, saluting eaters, wiping tables, introducing the menu to customers — yes, it is the boss of the restaurant.
Ma serves his customers not because he is short of staff, but because he loves doing what he does.
His mother cooked excellent Hangzhou food and even as a boy, Ma was already determined to become a cook for the rest of his life.
As a top student in middle school, he was expected to go to a good high school and then university, yet he went to a vocational school to learn cuisine.
“I told my parents and teachers, I love cooking and I cannot wait,” he recalled.
He was the best student in the vocational school — from the day he started to the day he graduated.
Ma learned traditional Hangzhou cuisine.
But when he left school and worked at Yan’an Hotel, his job was mostly washing dishes and prepping food, slaughtering poultry and fish, and cutting meat and vegetables.
“I never complained, I just looked for more work,” he said.
Sometimes he got up at 4 o’clock in the morning to prepare breakfast. Sometimes he asked to work extra hours late into the night so he could spend more time with experienced chefs.
The hotel realized the young Ma’s ambition and potential and when the head chef’s position became vacant, the 19-year-old filled in.
How did he manage leading people older than himself?
“First of all, I do my own job very well,” said Ma. He cites an example that he, with one grip, could accurately take 300 grams of shelled shrimp — the exact measure for the famous Hangzhou dish Longjing Shrimp.
Ma’s noodle chef, 59-year-old Lao Zhang says:
“I admire Ma even though he is much younger than me. Because he respects food and people. I also believe it is why he makes good business.”
As for the cooking, Ma says he follows what his teachers and his mother taught him and uses the cookbook “Hangzhou Cuisine” as his encyclopedia.
Ma shows the book proudly. Published in 1991, its papers are all yellowing, yet the cover is well protected. It records in minute detail recipes of typical Hangzhou dishes, as well as traditional methods of handling ingredients.
“The book carries lots of details that many young cooks don’t know,” Ma told Shanghai Daily. For example, when stirring shelled shrimps, bamboo chopsticks should be used to stir “because the natural material is always of room temperature.”
However, a large number of dishes in the book are not cooked by most Hangzhou restaurants. And many are now being forgotten by young Hangzhou people.
“I felt it is my duty to tell people what is real Hangzhou food,” Ma said. So, he opened his Hao Shi Tang restaurant that only provides authentic traditional Hangzhou food.
Hao Shi Tang literally means “good dinning hall.” It does look like a canteen in a community due to its simple decoration, and its price — the most expensive dish costs only 38 yuan (US$5.60).
The restaurant sits in a lane of an old community, which is so narrow that two cars could barely pass at one time. But gourmets soon flooded in.
On the day I went there, customers at a next table were talking to Ma.
“We eat little Hangzhou dishes because they are too light for us. But at this restaurant every Hangzhou dish is so good,” said one.
“Between salty and light, there is a flavor called ‘compound’,” answered Ma.
“Sometimes we highlight one food’s natural flavor, sometimes we borrow one material’s taste to fix another material’s imperfection. A good cook can make the compound taste balanced,” he explained.
Ma also feels it is important not to take short cuts and “don’t be bothered by the troubles.”
One example is the traditional jianghuo (meat seasoned in soy sauce).
Ma preserves the meat himself, usually duck or pork, in soy sauce and other seasonings for days.
He then hangs it outdoors to dry in the sun and air for about a week. Manufacturers today don’t go to that trouble.
But Ma says the smell of jianghuo comes just from the sunshine.
And the tianjiuniang (very light sweet rice wine with rice) made by Ma is strongly recommended as a perfect starter or for ending of a meal. It beats those you can buy in supermarkets, considering its freshness and perfectly balanced sweet taste and smell.
Another must-try is pork sausage also made by the restaurant. Cooks follow the old recipe and mixed 15 percent fat and 85 percent lean meat taken from pigs’ forelegs. “It has to be foreleg, so it is neither too tight nor too soft,” Ma said. The trick also is in his encyclopedia “Hangzhou Cuisine.”
Ma’s manager Wang Yi concluded that there are three reasons that Hangzhou dishes are being changed. First, some restaurants save steps to save time and troubles; second, some dishes are made to be pretty more than tasty; and third, cooks not from Hangzhou are doing Hangzhou dishes.
“We only hire Hangzhou locals,” said Wang. “They have the memory of ‘mum’s taste’.”
Wang also said Ma is very picky on materials, like vegetables have to be those grown in the city, shrimp and fish are provided by a few certain fishers, and rice eels must be wild.
Every dish in the restaurant is good. If you dare, try chicken feet and stingy tofu. Chicken feet is Ma’s signature food as his another business is a chicken feet franchise, and the stinky tofu is slight fried and then simmer in soup.
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