Friday 30^th & Saturday 1^st October 2022

Ken Hom OBE is the man who showed the British how to cook Asian food.

Ken Hom OBE is the man who showed the British how to cook Asian food. A leading authority on Chinese cuisine, he is one of the most respected and celebrated TV chefs of all time. His phenomenal success is easily measured. He is the author of almost 40 books, which have inspired millions of home cooks around the world. And in Britain alone, the Ken Hom wok is found in one in seven kitchens. Ken Hom, who resides in France and in Thailand but travels tirelessly all over the world, continues to appear regularly as celebrity chef, write books and keep an involvement with restaurants worldwide.

On any one day, when googling the name ‘Ken Hom' the search brings back an amazing average of 45,600,00 results.

Additionally, he has been one of the fathers in articulating what is now popularly known as ‘fusion cooking'. His seminal book called East Meets West Cuisine was published in 1986. It was his natural development of cultural experiences, elective affinities that lend to the blending of Eastern and Western foods, seasonings, and techniques derived from his family life, professional teaching career and travels. The success of the concept led him to create menus for an airline, hotel restaurants worldwide as well as restaurant concepts over the last 45 years.

Ken was born in 1949 in Tucson, Arizona, where his Cantonese parents had emigrated. After losing his father when he was just eight months old, his mother moved to Chicago to be with relatives. (In 2022, Ken's father was honoured with the award of a Congressional Gold Medal for his services during World War II). As Ken grew up, he found American food unpalatable compared to his mother's cooking, so she used to send him to school with a flask of hot rice and stir-fried vegetables.

Aged 11, he went to work in his uncle's restaurant, where he earned the equivalent of 30 pence per day. At 19 he headed off to California to study art history and French history. To pay for his university fees he started to give cookery lessons and quickly realised that this was where his heart really laid - especially with his native Chinese cuisine. He soon started teaching first in his home, and then at the California Culinary Academy (a school for professional chefs in San Francisco). He also travelled to France and Italy to explore gastronomy further.

A major national profile on him, published in the New York Times in 1981, coincided with the publication of his first book on Chinese Cookery Techniques, first commissioned in 1978, to much acclaim. Soon after the BBC contacted him, producing his first UK television series in 1984 Ken Hom's Chinese Cookery, which bore the same title as the book accompanying the series, that many still regard as the ‘bible'. The show introduced and demystified Chinese cooking for the UK over 30 years ago, and was an instant hit, broadcast throughout the world. The book sold over 1.5 million copies worldwide making publishing history by being the first non-fiction book with a first printing of 350,000. In 2009, the BBC celebrated the 25th anniversary of the book, which to this day continues to be a top-seller after more than three decades in print.

Ken presented a further six television series – Hot Chefs, Ken Hom's Hot Wok, Ken Hom's Foolproof Chinese Cookery, Travels with a Hot Wok and Exploring China: A Culinary Adventure, attracting millions of viewers. He also presented a documentary on the origins of the noodle, ‘The Noodle Road'. This documentary series for KBS (Korean Broadcasting Service) was a huge success when broadcasted in early 2009 that it was sold to over 25 countries around the world, winning several awards, including the prestigious Peabody Award in 2010.

In November 2014 he released Truffles, the updated version of his book ‘Truffes' first written in French in 2000 with Pierre-Jean Pebeyre of France's legendary Pebeyre truffle family. The book won the Gourmand Award 2014 for ‘Best Mushroom Book' category – USA.

His most recent book is his autobiography ‘My Stir Fried Life' which was translated in Chinese and launched in China in November 2019. It has now been translated in Thai with a publication date of February 2022. The book is a high spirited, life-enriching feast where the chopsticks never stop clattering, the platters are always abundant, and dreams – no matter how ridiculously unbelievable – can and do come true.

Since 2008, he has been an ambassador for Action Against Hunger, the humanitarian charity which works in over 40 countries helping families to feed their children and build a sustainable life. He has helped raise almost 11 million for the charity over the last 15 years. www.aahuk.org. Ken Hom also tirelessly supports several other charities such as The Ronald McDonalds House Charity (RMHC) and Prostate Cancer UK, www.prostatecanceruk.org raising awareness of the need for early detection. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2010 and has since made a successful and full recovery.

During his long career, Ken Hom has fronted a number of top restaurants world-wide, including the Yellow River group and the Oriental Restaurants group throughout the UK, the Maison Chin restaurant at the Bandara Hotel in Bangkok and most recently MEE restaurant at the Belmond's Copacabana Palace Hotel in Rio de Janeiro. All restaurants won several prestigious awards, with MEE being awarded a Michelin star as well as winning ‘Best Asian Restaurant' from the Eat and Drink awards and ‘Restaurant of the Year' from the Brazilian Government Tourist Bureau. Ken Hom has also worked as a consultant for hotels, restaurants and airlines and has cooked personally for presidents, prime ministers, celebrities and royalty.

One Michelin star awarded in March 2015 and again in 2016 and 2017 for his restaurant MEE located within the Belmond Copacabana Palace Hotel in Rio de Janeiro. MEE is now among the top six restaurants in Rio to win one Michelin star and currently there are no two or three stars awarded in the town.

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