If you guys don't know who Chef Bobby Chinn is, then I guess you better read this! French- trained Chef Bobby Chinn came to Brunei not long ago and made an episode here for his show World Cafe Asia which plays on Discovery Travel & Living Channel. This show won him the Asia Television Award for Best Entertainment Presenter 2007 and he has pretty much appeared in several other shows (like BBC's Saturday Kitchen and Full on Food, as well as UKTV Food's Great Food Live) before his big break with his own series. Now, who doesn't find a guy who can cook you good food, HOT?Half Chinese (yes! he is half Chinese!) and half Egyptian, he has been a chef for many years now venturing on diverse cultures and their authentic and unique cuisines.
As a viewer of World Cafe Asia on Discovery, I found that he's such a fun person. Never fail to put a smile on someone's face while cooking! And when he starts cooking, the ingredients will be as simple as possible, no hassle and the cooking will be downright the same - SIMPLE and EASY to follow.
Chinn was born in New Zealand, raised in England and actually has a BA in Finance and Economics (OMG, Right?), moved to New York City and began working on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange at 11 Wall Street. He came from a family of great cooks and while working in New York, there was where he found his passion for cooking! But before he discovered his love and talent for cooking, he actually attempted selling seafood to mob and even stand-up comedy!
To make ends meet, he waited tables in restaurants and later in San Francisco, a well-known chef called Huber Keller of Fleur De Lys (no, not the one at Qlap) took him in and trained him up. He also then worked with other cutting edge chefs like Jeffery IUnahara, Traci des Jardin, and Gary Danko.
It was when he was relocated to Vietnam that he thought that setting up a restaurant was a great potential for Vietnam's tourism as well as an opportunity to pour in some Western 'touch' into the country's culinary cuisines. And with that he opened some highly acclaimed restaurants such as Restaurant Bobby Chinn in Hanoi and several others including Camargue, Saigon Joe’s in Ho Chi Minh City, Miro and the Red Onion Bistro in the Hanoi Towers. He even wrote a cookbook out of his fusion Western & Vietnamnese inventions of recipes called Wild, Wild East. Lastly, not only he can cook, he can sing too! Last year in March, he actually performed while he launched Wild, Wild East at Starhill Gallery, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Pretty interesting eh? More about other Celebrity Chefs in my upcoming posts! XoD Till then, if you love food, dive into it, you might turn out to be a Chef afterall!
