3 questions for Mr. Chow, who taught America how to love Chinese cuisine: ‘Food helps build bridges’

Michael Chow knows the essential ingredient to life and he’s not afraid to share it: harmony. “Everything is connected,” the famed restaurateur behind the iconic restaurant chain Mr Chow tells Yahoo Entertainment. “We all have to speak from the heart and with harmony and understanding.”

For over 50 years, Chow has chosen to pursue harmony through food. Since opening the first Mr Chow in London in 1968, the son of Peking Opera superstar Zhou Xinfang has brought his specific blend of Chinese cuisine to such cities as Los Angeles, New York, Miami Beach and Las Vegas. And each new location is a chance for him to build bridges between the East and West over a dining table.

“I look at it as a kind of music,” Chow says, connecting his career to his father’s operatic legacy. “I’m using Chinese cuisine to communicate with the West and harmonize the cultures as it were.”

But as revealed in the new HBO documentary AKA Mr. Chow, Chow’s eventful life crosses countries and industries. After leaving China for a British boarding school in 1952, the now 84-year-old entrepreneur pursued passions ranging from the visual arts — a career he’s recently returned to — to film acting to fashion. But as he remarks in the documentary, the prejudices of the time ultimately pushed him towards two specific career paths: restaurants or laundries. He chose the former and never looked back.

“By circumstances, I entered the food world,” he says now. “It’s my job, my responsibility and especially my culture. I was always lucky to be in the right place at the right time, whether it was the Swinging Sixties in London or New York in the 1980s.”

And if viewers take away one message from AKA Mr. Chow, Chow hopes that it’s this: “I hope it helps people harmonize. The world should get smaller, not bigger and we should all move forward in harmony.”

Chow shares his eventful life story in the HBO documentary AKA Mr. Chow. (Courtesy HBO) (HBO)

1. You brought Mr Chow to America at a time when Chinese cuisine wasn’t highly regarded here. Did you encounter resistance?

There are three kinds of Chinese food: One is the great, great Chinese food eaten in China by 1.4 billion humans. And Western people can’t eat any of it! Or almost none of it, anyway. The second kind was developed in the United States and is kind of racism-based. The most famous dish of that kind of Chinese food would be chop suey or egg foo young, which are kind of crazy and ridiculous. And then there’s the third kind, which I curated at Mr Chow over half a century ago, and which emphasizes a particular way of eating and respecting the original author’s menus.

Someone said that Chinese cuisine is like a symphony, while French cuisine is like a beautiful quartet. So that’s the scale difference. Chinese food is very difficult [for Americans] to eat when you’re very young — it’s too sophisticated and complex. It’s not a piece of meat between two slices of bread! Those taste buds need to be developed when you’re a child, and I think I spoon-fed the public into getting more and more accustomed to Chinese cuisine. In the beginning, I gave them sugar, and later on I gave the more sophisticated foods. But I never compromised on the original recipes — I always followed the author’s intent.

Food helps build bridges. Mr Chow has been on this planet for 50 years, and I’ve seen the West get more comfortable with my cuisine. Food is very nourishing, and it’s my job to nourish people. If I’m serving a classic Chinese dish like Peking Duck, I’m always trying to be faithful to the original concept of the dish. It’s a very complex dish, and I can’t achieve all of it, but I do my best to make it as faithful to the author’s intent as I can. Basically, it’s a high culture-low culture mix, but it has dignity, it has righteousness and it helps people appreciate the beauty of Chinese cuisine.

Chow at the opening of the L.A. branch of Mr Chow. (Courtesy HBO) (HBO)

2. The Mr Chow restaurant in New York attracted such art world superstars as Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat. What was it like to have celebrities like that as regular customers?

I created an environment where all creative people were welcomed, whether you were a classical musician, a writer, a director, an actor or an artist. And it was organic, not calculated. I was born into a theater family, so it was my good fortune to extend that to others.

I remember that Andy [Warhol] was very extroverted at that time, because after he got shot [by Valerie Solanas in 1968], he changed bands as it were and became very social. I was very lucky to meet him at that time. At that time in New York, Studio 54 had come in with a big bang in the ’70s, but Mr Chow opened at the beginning of the ’80s when it was closing. In fact, as you can see in the documentary, [Studio 54 owners] Ian Schrager and Steve Rubell threw me a birthday party with over a thousand people. It was also a goodbye party [to the club], and there was no drinking because the liquor license had been lost!

So Mr Chow came in and took over, and gathered all those artists in one place. That’s common in the art world; think of Picasso and all those poets meeting in cafes in early 20th century Paris. And then there was the devastating AIDS crisis, which was so connected to the art world. So many creative people passed away. It was very painful, and we can still feel their loss today. I happened to be at the center of that, also.

3. Back in your acting days, you and your sister, actress Tsai Chin, were both in the 007 adventure You Only Live Twice. What’s your favorite Sean Connery memory?

Well, he was Mr. Cool, wasn’t he? He had an incredible sense of humor, and he got better and better looking as he got older. He was a giant and his very much missed. It was a great honor to work with him. Daniel [Craig] was a fantastic Bond, too. The Bond movies are fantastic. They’re very operatic, right? Opera is on a grand scale, and so are those movies.

I’ve been very lucky to work with all kinds of actors and directors. I’ve worked with Nicholas Ray, Wim Wenders, Francis Ford Coppola — the list goes on. I did a movie called 55 Days at Peking with some of the biggest stars in the world: Charlton Heston, Ava Gardner, David Niven. I’ve always been in those kinds of environments; I don’t know how and I don’t why, but I’m not complaining!

I do think what’s happened to movies now is very unfortunate. People would rather talk about content than artistry, which is very sad. I was watching John Huston’s The Asphalt Jungle this past weekend, and it’s such a beautiful movie. I’m going to the premiere of Martin Scorsese’s new movie [Killers of the Flower Moon] and that kind of film is very important. Movies must be preserved amidst the noise.

AKA Mr. Chow premieres Sunday, Oct. 22 on HBO and Max.

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