From Singapore to Taiwan: Asia’s best pastry chef Angela Lai thanks mum for inspiration
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From Singapore to Taiwan: Asia'due south best pastry chef Angela Lai thanks mum for inspiration
Making fruit tarts and cream puffs with her mother as a child paved the fashion for the chef's mastery of pastry on the global stage.
The World's 50 Best Restaurants named Singaporean Angela Lai of Taipei's Tairroir restaurant Asia's Best Pastry Chef of 2021. (Photo: Tairroir)
14 Apr 2022 06:30AM (Updated: 09 Jul 2022 10:22PM)
Angela Lai might be cooking all the way in Taiwan's acclaimed Tairroir eating house, but the recently named Asia's Best Pastry Chef for 2022 still holds fast to Singapore touches when it comes to dreaming up desserts.
In ane of the ii-Michelin-starred restaurant's signature sweets, Pineapple Cake, for instance, the Singapore-born chef added star anise to Taiwan pineapple marmalade and cooked it in the same style she would make pineapple tarts dorsum home.
She and then integrated the jam into a dessert with camellia oil sable, pineapple sorbet, and rum and raisin curd.
The 35-twelvemonth-old credits her award, which was given by The World's 50 All-time Restaurants, not simply to "passion and perseverance in creating pastries" but as well the joy she feels in "reinterpreting the culture of Taiwan using local produce and the techniques that I've learnt."
Tairroir is a restaurant that deconstructs Taiwanese cooking, merging it with French techniques and using seasonal local produce.
Lai's other creations are familiar yet inspiring for those who grew upward in Asia: Pong Pia, for instance, recalls the flaky molasses-filled pastry but features dark brown sugar, Madong chocolate cremeux and sesame oil water ice cream in a sophisticated new take.
Joining the Tairroir team when the restaurant opened in 2022 – Lai and Taiwanese caput chef Kai Ho previously worked together at Guy Savoy in Marina Bay Sands – she quickly adjusted to life in Taipei.
"I barbarous in honey with Taiwan the first time I travelled hither for holiday (considering of) the four seasons, dissimilar civilization and amazing local produce," Lai told CNA Lifestyle via email.
She appreciated the enthusiasm and kindness of the Taiwanese people, remembering an occasion when she got lost and a couple went far out of their way to accept her to her destination.
Having to adapt to life in a place with earthquakes and typhoons was nearly as large a modify as when she left a corporate task to pursue a career in the kitchen.
"I used to be a sales banana in Swissotel Merchant Court's Sales and Marketing Department… picking up calls, taking inquiries, treatment paperwork, doing site inspections and organising stuff," Lai said.
In 2008, later on a year on the chore, she left to earn a diploma in pastry and baking arts at At-Sunrice GlobalChef Academy.
She then worked her way through kitchens including those of The Fullerton Hotel Singapore and Marina Bay Sands.
Her life now is "totally different", involving "thinking a lot on your feet" and "way longer working hours". Simply, "I'm definitely happier in the kitchen."
It was a love affair that started at the age of five, inspired by her mother.
"I used to bake with her when I was lilliputian and I've enjoyed being in the kitchen ever since. She definitely brings out that passion I take for pastry and baking," Lai said, recalling the fruit tarts and cream puffs they made together when she was a kid.
What's more than, her mum being "more than 100 per cent supportive of my career option" is "one of the reasons I'yard here today."
As a pastry chef, people ofttimes assume she only bakes cakes for a living, she said with a laugh.
"It is mode more than that. Having the passion for what y'all are doing, loving what you do and enjoying the whole procedure is very important to me."
If there's i affair she could modify about herself, she admitted candidly, it would be "my bad temper". "I'm pretty tame now, but I approximate it still can be improve," she laughed.
No, "I didn't throw things that would break – too expensive to do so – but I threw spoons into the sink." And, yes, "I did brand people cry back and so."
The turning point came when "I opened up and had a good talk with my squad and realised the problem lay in my temper. Then, I told myself I had to take information technology in, in order to grow together with the squad".
Life looks pretty rosy right now, and while she's open to any opportunities the time to come might hold, "I'm definitely moving back home again" at some point, she said.
When she misses home, she told u.s.a., her condolement food is salted egg yolk fish peel or potato chips. "It makes me feel closer to domicile," she said.
READ: Asia'south 50 Best Restaurants 2021: Hong Kong'due south The Chairman takes tiptop spot, Singapore'southward Odette is No 2
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/dining/angela-lai-tairroir-asia-s-best-pastry-chef-2021-250091
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