This is part of an ongoing series of interviews I’m doing with my favourite Chinese foodies that I follow on Instagram. Come and follow the #ChineseFoodiesofIG hashtag on Instagram and leave a comment showing your support for these talented folk!

Where are you from? (Where are you really from?)

Hong Kong, through and through. If you wanted to get into it, I was born in a little city in Ontario called Kitchener, but by the time I had a sense of the world, I found myself in Hong Kong.

What does Chinese food mean to you?

Chinese food is the food that’s in my blood but it’s also the trade that I’ve elected to pursue. It’s the cuisine that keeps me going as much as it entices me to learn it. And that’s what we do at my restaurant, Junzi Kitchen, where we make Chinese cuisine for the everyday.

Rice or noodles?

Rice; dad used to be in the habit of calling me "rice bucket” for the three+ bowls of rice every night.

Share a food memory:

The first dish my dad ever taught me to make was claypot rice, 煲仔饭. It eventually became my first signature dish and emblematic of what I really loved about Chinese cuisine: simplicity that speaks volumes through technique and history.

Favourite Chinese vegetable?

Right now, Buddha’s Palm, in no small part because Buddha's Palm is a squash that tells the story of a global migration of cultivation practices. Known as chayote, the squash is native to Central America that made its way through North America to Italy, through Jamaica to England, through Brazil to France and eventually to mainland China in the 19th century. Its shoots are well known in Taiwan as "dragon whiskers", but in the mainland, the fruit is more common, which is what we use at Junzi. For the spring, they're lightly stir-fried with salt and white pepper to retain its natural crispy texture.

What’s in your fridge at home?

In the rare moment I hadn’t spend my whole day cooking in the restaurant, I like to fire up the barbecue, and I throw everything on there: fresh oyster mushrooms, rainbow trout, lamb skewers, cabbage. And I dress it with the few staple spicy sauces I have at home: Fly by Jing Chili Crisp for its seductively layered flavours, Junzi Chili Oil for its clean heat, and Tapatío, "es una salsa…muy salsa."

Who’s your Chinese food legend?

Cecilia Chiang is the queen of Chinese food in America. Chinese food could not be what it was without her or her San Francisco restaurant opened in 1961. She demonstrated to the sceptical American palate that Chinese food was nuanced, delightful and brimming with regional diversity. Today, you can trace perhaps the most influential Chinese restaurants in the US to her mentorship: Cecilia’s son Philip is the founder of PF Chang’s and one of her first sous chefs opened Panda Inn that became Panda Express.

The first time I cooked for her was for her 99th birthday, at Junzi. We made her tomato & egg noodles, chun bing, cured tomatoes, and food that I believed Chinese cuisine sang best: in clear, crisp, delightful tones grounded in the understanding and study of culture.

What would you like to tell the world about Chinese food?

There is so much to say, so many stories to tell. My experience of Chinese cuisine has always been that there’s more to Chinese cuisine than what the surface presents. Take the simplest bowl of noodles for example. A little while ago, they found, in a sealed jar, a 4,000 year old noodle! That is to say: we’ve been making noodles for longer than we’ve been writing!

I myself have found that the deeper I dig into Chinese cuisine, the more stories I find, which I spend my days learning to tell, through food, words or otherwise.

#ChineseFoodiesofIG: Lucas Sin, Junzi Kitchen