The mother-son team behind @woonkitchen.

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?

Keegan: Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. But I’m really from China! Specifically, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Mama Fong: From Hong Kong. Born in Shanghai, moved to Hong Kong when I was 5 years old.

Share a food memory:

Keegan: My greatest food memories are the times when my mom hosted shabu-shabu dinners at our house for all my high school friends and my sister and her college friends. We’d all sit around her dining table with a lazy Susan and do sake bomb contests. The last one to finish their sake bomb had to eat the chicken foot. My mom was always the first to finish and our friend Danny was always last. It was always a good time and a moment I was able to share with my mostly white friends who had never experienced anything like it.

Rice or noodles?

Keegan: Noodles. Always. I’m sure that’s a common answer. I love a great fried rice (especially my mom’s that we serve at the restaurant), but noods all day.

Mama Fong: Rice. My memory of growing up in Shanghai was eating a bowl of white rice. I would have my aunt mix the dark sauce from braised meat but without the meat into the rice until each grain of white was covered with the dark sauce. It was the tastiest rice I’ve had and it still resonates with me as of today.

What does home taste like?

Keegan: Everything we serve at Woon. Our menu literally features all the recipes my mom cooked for us growing up. The ones that are most nostalgic for me are beef stir fried noodles, fried tofu fishcakes and soy veggie wraps. My mom would make big batches of them for my sister and me at night and whatever we didn’t finish we’d put in the fridge and eat them cold the next morning.

Mama Fong: Home tastes like the fragrant smell of rice cooking in the rice cooker and the cling clang sound of the metal spatula stir frying in the wok, followed by the aroma of the food cooking.

The perfect stir fry:

Keegan: Has to be in a ripping hot wok with plenty of ‘wok hey’. Our beef noodles at Woon are made that way with a bit of a char. It’s the best.

Mama Fong: The best way to stir fry is with high heat and quick stir what Chinese would call wok hey ( heat of the wok). This is the best way to retain the flavor and not overcooking.

How did you learn to cook?

Keegan: By watching my mom my entire life. I still don’t know what I’m doing. Later in life I watched a lot of Vice Munchies.

Mama Fong: My father had a Shanghainese palette which is mainly dishes cooked with sugar and dark soy sauce. My mother was not a creative cook, so in order to please my father, every dish she cooked would have sugar and dark soy. When I started college I bought a Chinese cookbook and tried every dish in that book which was more towards Cantonese style, using steaming techniques and light seasoning. It thus opened up my creative side and evolved into different ways of cooking and experimenting with various ingredients and seasonings.

Most underrated Chinese ingredient:

Keegan: That’s tough. I feel like they are all underrated! This isn’t even underrated because it’s widely used, but I’ll just say bean curd [tofu]. Growing up, my mom always made us food revolving around bean curd and not until we put the menu together for Woon did we realise how much we eat it. I think a lot of people are always surprised that our menu is mostly vegan and consists of a lot of tofu, but that’s just how it happened.

Mama Fong: Chinese celery is underrated due to its unusual taste, which I can’t describe. Some say it has a fragrant smell and medicinal taste. However, when Chinese celery is stir fried with shiitake mushrooms with a dash of oyster sauce and garlic – as my mother would cook it – it brings out a sweet taste of the vegetable. It is also beneficial for lowering high blood pressure and has other health benefits.

Who's your Chinese food legend?

Keegan: Although we call one of our wok chefs ‘Brian Wok Legend’, my Chinese food legend will always be Mama Fong.

Mama Fong: My aunt Joyce Chen was a well-known chef in Boston who opened three restaurants in the 60s to early 70s. I believe she was the first Chinese woman to have her own cooking show on PBS. I still have her signed cookbook on the shelf. You can say she indirectly influenced me with her Shanghai cooking.

Favourite Chinese vegetable?

Keegan: This is tough. I’d say either shiitake mushrooms, which we widely use in our recipes, or bamboo shoots. There are these bamboo shoots that my mom uses in her Shanghainese Chicken Soup and they are soooo crunchy and good.

Mama Fong: My favorite vegetables can only be found in LA’s Chinese markets. Choy Sum (菜心) means‘heart or tender part of the vegetable’. The best way to cook it is to stir fry with some salt and garlic – simple, but you can taste the sweetness of the fresh vegetables. Unfortunately nowadays it doesn’t taste as sweet as I remembered.

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

Keegan: Chinese food is so complex. There are so many types of cuisines from all of China’s regions that you can’t really define it. All I have to say is: don’t knock it until you try it. Some Chinese foods are spicy, some are stinky, some are ugly, but they are most likely all very tasty.

Mama Fong: Chinese food comes in many different flavors, depending on what region it comes from. It could be spicy, sweet and sour, salty and pickled, in the form of dumplings, wontons, baos or noodles. There are many innovative and talented young Chinese chefs nowadays who have transformed traditional Chinese food to another level.

#ChineseFoodiesofIG: Woon Kitchen