Poon’s London founder Amy Poon on the power of food nostalgia and Chinese food fetishism
- The daughter of the first Chinese chef to win a Michelin star on breaking her vow never to open a restaurant, and real Chinese home cooking
Amy Poon grew up in a Chinese culinary dynasty in London, the daughter of Bill Poon, a Hong Kong migrant who was the world’s first Chinese chef to win a Michelin star.
She read Japanese at Oxford, lived all over the world and has just opened Poon’s London, a Chinese bistro and deli selling a range of signature Poon’s sauces, dumplings and ingredients such as lap cheong (Chinese sausage), in Bermondsey’s Spa Terminus food market.
Did you feel you were always destined to work in restaurants?
I swore, having grown up in a restaurant, I would never do it. It’s a bit like the circus, because people see you as a performer, it’s fun, and it’s dangerous and sort of glamorous and glitzy. But you go behind the scenes and the circus is pretty grimy and grungy and it’s hard graft.
It was also quite lonely, because restaurants are typically open when people want to celebrate holidays, their Friday nights and weekends. But it had its benefits – in my teens, my friends would come for lunch, be treated like guests and I could order Peking duck or whatever I wanted!
Why was Poon’s such a game changer among Chinese restaurants in the UK?
