Martin Yan has been on TV, he says, “longer than anyone.” He’s not entirely right, but when he says it, it feels right, if that makes any sense. When Yan began his career as an on-air chef personality, broadcasting through a local Calgary TV station in 1978, there were few chefs in the cooking-show arena. Compared to the present day’s food-show overload (Man vs. Child: Chef Showdown, anyone?), the number of people with successful TV food careers when Yan began could be counted on one hand: the two most prominent were the legendary Julia Child and Graham Kerr, better known as the Galloping Gourmet.
That makes the success of Yan Can Cook, which has shot more than 1,500 episodes, that much more impressive. That the ostentatious, perma-smiled, thickly accented Guangzhou, China, native was able to capture the attention and imagination of a national audience speaks to his abilities both as a chef and an entertainer.
And Yan is certainly a showman. His shows are an onomatopoetic symphony of “Bam!”s, “Oh!”s, and “Chopchopchop!”s, combined with an incessant din of cleaver hitting cutting board. In a popular YouTube video of Yan giving a demonstration to students at the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, he proclaims, “The restaurant is a stage. And you are the actor. You have to entertain your customer.” He proceeds to dissect an entire chicken carcass in approximately 16 seconds, narrating the entire action sequence with a mix of shouted verbs (“Cut!”) and unintelligible sound effects (“Bshbshbsh!”) to raucous applause from the CIA students.
Food Republic caught up with Yan, who has been filming a new television series, Martin Yan: Taste of Asia, for PBS.
How are you, chef?
I just returned from Malaysia, filming for over a month. I basically travel all over the country and explore the landscape, the history, the food, the culture and the arts and crafts. We film a total of about 65 days. And we’ve finished 50 days, so there are about 15 days to go. We go to remote areas, to the jungle. We get insect bites. We bump into wild boars, monkeys. We were setting up something and a herd of monkeys, about six or seven of them, came and destroyed all the things we put together, because they’re so fast. We turned around and the monkeys just jumped over and grabbed everything. So we had to redo everything. It was amazing.
That sounds like fun.
Well, when you love what you do, everything you do is fun.
Are there a lot of ethnic Chinese people in Malaysia?
About 25 to 28 percent. There a lot of Chinese immigrants from China, but they are not all from the same province. Some are from Hakka, some from Suzhou, Fujian, Hainan island. Each of these groups brings a distinctive cuisine and culture and heritage. If you live in Los Angeles, you’re most likely exposed to Cantonese cuisine. Maybe a little Sichuan, Shanghai, but you’ll hardly see Suzhou, Hakka, or Fujian cuisine. There’s not enough people who migrated to the U.S. from that part of the country.
What is the best form of Chinese cuisine that Americans don’t know about?
There are a lot of things that Americans aren’t familiar with. I told you about Fujian cuisine; it’s very popular in Southeast Asia. Of course, in America, most people are familiar with Cantonese cuisines. Now more Sichuan, more Hunanese, Shanghainese, Beijing restaurants are opening up. But still, you go deep into the Midwest and people are still probably not exposed to a lot of these cuisines.
So, what is typical Fujian or Suzhou cuisine?
Suzhou cuisine is famous for a lot of pickles. They’re famous for fish that are braised and pan fried. They use Chinese olives. Fujian are famous for “Buddha Jumps Over the Wall.” This particular casserole is so delicious that the Buddhist monks cannot help themselves — they jump over the wall to try to taste it.
What is it?
It’s actually a casserole with all kind of abalone and chicken and pork, all kinds of good, rich stuff. And it’s cooked for 36 hours and steamed for hours and hours … so the essence of it all just melts together. It’s very rich. There’s nothing like it in Western cuisine.
