In conversation with Edward Lam

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This article was published 31/08/2017 (2987 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Edward Lam traded the world of roller-coasters for the wild ride of running a restaurant. 

The Hong Kong-born entrepreneur, 48, worked for Disney for years, travelling the world to new theme-park locations as a licence broker for electronic games. He had semi-retired when he met Winnipeg restaurateur Masa Sugita and was inspired to follow his longtime love of Japanese food. The two opened their first restaurant, the now-defunct Miyabi, on Osborne Street in 2003, despite the fact that Lam had no formal kitchen training. 

“I have the attitude that I don’t like being judged to say that you can’t do something, so I went pretty crazy at that time to try to prove myself,” recalls the chef, sitting in his immaculate white jacket in Yujiro, the partners’ second Japanese venue on Grant Avenue (Sugita has since moved on to open Izakaya Edokko). The two had a third partner who was a trained sushi chef, but Lam was determined to learn for himself, shadowing Sugita and doing his own research.

After the restaurant opened, he recalls working 16-hour days — 10 hours at the restaurant and then six hours at home on the internet streaming cooking videos from Japan and Taiwan.

“Taiwan has a pretty well-established Japan culture, because they have been ruled by Japan for a while, and at least with those videos, I can understand Taiwanese. But in Japanese, I don’t understand, I just guess.

“Sometimes I would spend three hours to watch a half-hour episode, because I’d have to do it over and over.”

Lam first came to Winnipeg with his family in 1986 and graduated from Dakota Collegiate. He then moved to Vancouver to go to university, but he dropped out after his first year. 

“I was a pretty bad boy; I was a pretty cocky boy,” he says, laughing. “I was doing a lot of side jobs of selling stuff, like selling on the internet, bringing stuff from China and selling it to people in Canada, so I was making quite good money. I asked myself, ‘Why are you spending so much time in university while you’re making more money than a graduate?”

“Well, I know now I was stupid. Yes, I turned out all right, but I don’t tell my son that!”

Lam’s oldest son, 18, is enrolled at the University of Manitoba; he also has a 17-year-old daughter and an 11-year-old son. He brought his wife, whom he met in Hong Kong, back to Winnipeg in 1997 in search of a slower way of life, even though he no longer had family ties here.

“Winnipeg is so cold compared to where I’m from,” he says. “But I always say, the people are really friendly. When I first came to Winnipeg, it seemed impossible — how can you leave home without locking the door? Back in 1980-something, we would literally walk out the door and go to IGA or wherever and grab bread, don’t need a key, don’t lock the door. I was like, you guys are crazy; you’re going to come back to an empty house. My friends, my neighbours, were like, ‘No, don’t worry about it.’ I always liked it here.”

Free Press: Have you always been interested in cooking? 

Edward Lam: No. I wasn’t a cook at all. I don’t really cook at home. Everybody from my family, they see what I do right now, none of them believe it. They say, “You don’t even know how to make instant noodles; how can you cook?”

FP: So what changed? 

Lam: I was working on a project (for Disney) in Japan for a few months and I lived in a hotel. The chef there was very nice; he said, “I have nothing to do at night after work. Why don’t you come down and I’ll start showing you how to do sushi?”

So that’s how my interest began… In Japan, you might hear “itadakimasu”; it means “thanks for whoever worked so we can have this beautiful meal.” In Japan, there’s a great respect for every ingredient. They teach kids that when you’re done, your bowl has not even one grain of rice left.

FP: Do you come from a foodie family? 

Lam: Yes, but they didn’t cook. Well, not exactly — in traditional Chinese families, all the women know how to cook — but my dad owned a restaurant in Hong Kong, like a chain… we just ran around there as kids.

My dad loved to eat out; we ate out a lot… I always tell myself I’m blessed with the tongue.

Am I really good at cooking? Maybe not. But I definitely know what good food is, how to taste. That’s my upside. I’ve eaten a lot of different kinds of food.

Look at my size (pats his belly, laughing). I don’t eat little. I make sure I eat enough that I remember the taste.

FP: What’s a nostalgic dish from your childhood? 

Lam: My grandma and my grandpa, they often made a hometown dish that will always be in my head. One is with pickled vegetables and pork belly. Super-fatty dish, we had to wait for it for half an hour so we can skim the fat off the top, then eat the meat and the vegetables. So, so good.

FP: What do you always have in your pantry? 

Lam: This particular type of udon that my friend helped me bring over from Japan. It’s so rare.

FP: What do you consider your signature dish? 

Lam: Right now, ramen is the most popular, but I think my speciality is sashimi (in her 4 1/2-star 2013 review of Yujiro, then-Free Press reviewer Marion Warhaft called it “incomparable” and “superb”).

A lot of people think, oh, sashimi, you just get a fresh piece of fish, cut it up, done. That’s a very, very wrong perception. A nice fresh piece of fish, that’s not umami because it’s too fresh. Just like with a cow… aging breaks down fibre.

Of course, you don’t age it as long (as beef) and at a different temperature. Still, in the fridge, a normal tuna can age up to four days. It’s super-tender, umami, melt in your mouth.

FP: Is there any food you hate? 

Lam: I love any style of food, but there is a Korean dish, fermented skate (hongeo, a fish fermented in its own urine). That ammonia will kill you.

I travelled to Korea a lot when I was with Disney. The older generation love that and they would bring it out with very expensive soju (clear liquor) as a delicacy. They cut it in small pieces and they give it to you and you’re like, “What the heck is that, man?” You can smell it as soon as it comes into the room. 

 

jill.wilson@freepress.mb.ca   Twitter: @dedaumier