Ming Tsai: Voice of Fusion 3/4 | Asian American Innovators

Asian American Profiles

Chef Ming Tsai: Voice of Fusion

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     For Simply Ming [I covered] the whole system of master sauces. If you've read the preface, it is the way we do stuff in restaurants. You have a master marinade or a sauce and you're saying what else can you do with it? That's how I used to cook on Sundays. We're closed on Sunday, so I used to go to Blue Ginger Saturday night before going home and I used to grab meat already marinated or marinade for the meat or a soy-like syrup or some of these sauces that were done and I could so easily put together a dinner and it was not because I was a chef but because most of the hard work -- the sauce -- is already done. How easy is it to use? It's very easy to use. I would literally be able to put dinner on the table in 15 minutes because I had most of the hard work done, and the master flavor of the dish is already done too. That's how Simply Ming came about.
     As you can tell, I didn't use nearly as many quote-unquote extravagant ingredients or rare ingredients not to be bland but because you can do great things with mangoes and apples and ginger and onions. So the ingredients are not esoteric by any means and the fact that you make the mango sauce on Saturdays and you serve the mango sauce with your sear cut, two days later you take the mango sauce and you stirfry it with snap peas and chicken, and four days later, when it darkens, you can puree it and make a nice mango syrup and serve it with beef and shiitake sautee. And that's a system -- and I've heard some great comments already -- which I'm very happy to say people are loving. They like the fact that they can get more than one use. If they are going to spend a Satuday and cook, it's not just for that one night. They can actually use it for the next week. So structurally the books are much diffferent because it's really based on master sauces and making big batches of master sauces and the idea of the second book was, I really wanted to get people to cook east/west in their homes.

GS: You and Polly have a partnership that has lasted. How did you manage the division of labor?
MT: It's easier than you think. She wasn't going to be involved in the restaurant in the beginning because she's an RN, a nurse by training, She was doing hospice work. You need to be an angel to do hospice work. When she found out that to get my loan I put the house as collateral, the two cars as collateral, our dog as collateral -- it was literally all we had -- she said, "I'm not going to let you lose our life savings by yourself so I'm going to jump on board and I'm going to do the books." So not only did she teach herself to do bookkeping, she also taught herself peachtree software which is not an easy software. Obviously she's gotta be very bright. So she became the bookkeeper/CFO. You can call anyone a CFO if she's the top person doing the books.
     For the first couple years [until David was born] she acted in that role. Plus of course she'd be there as an owner and walk the restaurant and say hi to her friends and VIPs and stuff. But we were always lucky enough to have very strong restaurant managers and sous chefs under me so that she didn't have to work a host station. She was busy enough doing the books. We're fifty-fifty owners. There's no boss between her and I. We had David four years ago, in 2000. Fortunately we found this great lady, Sandra, who became our bookkeeper. So [Polly] got to pull out of the restaurant.
     We came to the conclusion that if we're going to have a child, we want to raise the child, not have a nanny raise the child. There's nothing wrong with a nanny raising a child, but that was our decision. So she became the stay-at-home mom. She would sign checks in the beginning. She still signs checks. We both sign checks because we need to see what we're signing. But she's much more removed from the day-to-day operations of the restaurant because now we have a second son. So she works harder than anyone up here at Blue Ginger with two little boys. I can tell you she does not have an easy job. But she's still the owner, so when I travel, and when I'm away, she'll come by and check on things. People just stand a little bit straighter when the owner walks into the restaurant.
     There was never, "You gotta do this and I gotta do that." I'll tell you a quick funny story. When we were opening the restaurant -- I've opened five restaurnats before but this was the first one that was my money, our money. At the end of the night, it's two in the morning. We were counting the money and we were off like a couple of hundred dollars. I'm like, "I don't really care. Whatever! New system, new waiters, whatever!" The next night we were off two-fifty. "Yeah, that's okay." The fourth night, we were off like five hundred. And she's like, "This is ridiculous! How can you possibly run a business like this?" Now we're tired, right? We'd been working three weeks straight, no break, no nothing. Work 'till three in the morning and I would get back to work by seven and start prepping stuff. And that one night we were off by five hundred, she looked at me -- keep in mind she's a hospice nurse -- and she said, "I'd rather work with dying people than do this," which is pretty poignant and pretty much to the point.

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We got over the hump obviously and we started balancing, and the rest is history. But the pressure's there. When your health and your livelihood and your entire life is on the line and you have to succeed and do more than fifty covers a night, the pressure's there. Fortunately the timing was great, the market was strong, the dotcoms were crazy six years ago. We were in the right location. There's only two or three restaurants in the neighborhood. Everyone that lives out here is well traveled. I don't care if you're rich. What I do care is if you like good food and good wine. So we built in a lot of people who like good food and good wine. Could I do it a second time like this time? Probably not. It was just a combination of all the stars being in a line.

GS: You sound like you have a hectic life with the TV show, the restaurant and Ming's Store. What do you do on Sundays to relax?
MT: Red Sox! We are going to go to a lot of Sox games. With two boys, we just hang with them. I can't wait to get nights off. I always fire up the grill on Sundays. The best food is always someone else's food, that's for sure. But if we are going to cook ourselves, at least we know what we have. Plus if you own a restaurant you grab a couple of lamb racks and you take them home so the next day you can fire them up. PAGE 4