He championed Cantonese cooking in Southeast Asia, and helped create fusion Nanyang Cantonese: chef Peter Tsang looks back
- Chef Peter Tsang is an advocate for Cantonese cuisine, and is widely credited with assimilating Southeast Asian flavours into it. He advocates for charities too
- He talks about wanting to be boss soon after he started cooking in Hong Kong, the career boost working in Shangri-La hotels gave him, and passing on knowledge
As Typhoon Koinu battered Hong Kong on October 9, 2023, forcing the Hong Kong Observatory to issue a No 9 storm alert, 69-year-old chef Peter Tsang was whipping up another storm in the kitchens of the Wan Chai Convention and Exhibition Centre on Hong Kong Island.
Typhoon or not, the culinary maestro rallied chefs to give their best for the seventh International Master Chef Charity Gala Dinner in Hong Kong attended by 2,000 guests. In the end, more than HK$10 million (US$1.3 million) was raised at the banquet.
The support of chefs from around the world is testament to his stature in the industry.
“He was the lou dai [boss] who made a call and got a hundred responses,” says executive Chinese chef Alan Chan of Cassia at Capella Singapore, who has been collaborating with Tsang on charity galas since 2014.
Tsang has been galvanising Chinese chefs to take part in charity galas in places from Melbourne in Australia and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia to Macau and Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, for a long time. The funds that are raised are donated to government-approved charities, medical and elderly-care institutions.
