Most people should have seen Stephen Chow's movie "God Eater", I don't know if you remember, when the movie just opened, the "God of Food" played by Stephen Chow clapped his hands on a plate of "Emperor Fried Rice".
And the "fried king" actor he praised is the prototype of the "god of food" of the whole movie - The Chaoshan Hong Kong celebrity chef Dai Long.
Dai Long is the imperial chef of the celebrity family banquet and the executive chef of the state banquet on the night of Hong Kong's return to the motherland. Macau's gambling king once spent 5,000 Hong Kong dollars just to eat a bowl of emperor fried rice he made himself, the restaurant circle is quite famous for carving grandpa beef brisket, and the 5 million yuan purchase of brisket secret recipe also comes from Dai Long.
Dai Longya", the original dish countless, has won the French Gastronomy Association Excellence Star Award, the French Gastronomy Association Blue Ribbon Award, the French Gastronomy Association First Class Chef Award and many other international awards, renowned at home and abroad, together with Yang Guanyi, Chen Dong, Xu Peidong and known as the four famous chefs in Hong Kong.
In 1949, Dai Long was born in a poor family in Puning, Guangdong Province, his father made a living by pulling rickshaws, and a family of eight people was crammed into a 30-square-meter burrow.
Due to his family's poverty, Dai Long could not eat anything advanced and meticulous when he was a child, but occasionally his father took the family to eat several Chaozhou food stalls to improve the food, and the Puning dried tofu, oyster sauce, fish rice, Qingshui beef hot pot, fat belly and other dishes in the restaurant all reflected the Chaoshan diet's good cooking seafood, heavy soup and light oil, advocating light and health-conscious food culture, which subtly influenced Dai Long from a young age, and unconsciously became the basis of his future cooking philosophy.
Due to the large number of younger siblings in the family, Dai Long, as the eldest son, dropped out of a restaurant at the age of 13 to do apprenticeships, and has since formed an indissoluble relationship with "eating".
Hardworking and talented, in just three years, Dai Long stood out from the crowd and went from being a cook to a chef. In 1973, at a young age, he replaced his master and went to the five-star hotel in Bandung, Indonesia, as a chef, and at that time, his monthly salary was already several thousand Hong Kong dollars, and he was not complacent about this, but wanted to get ahead in the industry. In the 1980s, Dai Long worked as a chef in a number of five-star hotels, and it was also in these high-end hotels that he met celebrities such as Stephen Chow, Li Ka-shing, Ho Hung-sun, Andy Lau, and Jackie Chan.
In the early years, Dai Long took a photo with Xie Xian
Photo with Andy Lau
With his innate sensitivity to food, Dai Long has not only been willing to try, but also pays great attention to detail. In his view, details are the most critical factor in determining success or failure.
The legendary "Emperor Fried Rice", which made Dai Long famous overnight, is the result of his fine details and demanding perfection.
The emperor's fried rice was inspired by a conversation between Dai Long and a Hong Kong female star, who inadvertently revealed that she spent a full 200,000 yuan in order to ask the master to make a special perfume according to her own characteristics.
Dai Long was greatly touched when he heard this, and he began to think about whether his fried rice could be like this unique perfume, making a special taste.
After unremitting attempts, Dai Long found that the perfection of cooking needs to start from the selection of materials and grasp the details to the extreme. In his emperor's fried rice, it was necessary to use expensive Sri Lankan crabs, only crab claw meat; use Malaysian eggs, plus Italian olive oil, twenty years of Shaoxing flower carving wine, Vietnamese 60 degree fish sauce, large pot raw soy sauce as condiments; dry stir-fry with impurity-free distilled water, then sauté the rice and ingredients, and finally serve in a gold-plated rice bowl. Every step needs to be strictly controlled, and one is indispensable.
At that time, the gambling king He Hongshen spent 5,000 yuan in order to eat this bowl of fried rice, which caused a great sensation in Hong Kong, and the image of Dai Long's "god of food" also became legendary.
Whenever someone called him the "God Eater," he would always explain, "God Eater!" God Eater! This god is not the god of the gods, but the spirit of cooking, a spirit of excellence. ”
During Dai Long's tenure as the chef of Conrad Hotel, there were many celebrities among the restaurant's regular customers, so he carefully wrote down the dietary taboos and preferences of each guest, and strived to meet everyone's tastes at every meal. Every time Li Ka-shing goes to dinner, his secretary will find Dai Long in advance, telling him that mr. old man gout, seafood, especially shellfish, must not be used, and must use olive oil for cooking, beef, marinated ham these ingredients can not be used, in the face of these requirements, Dai Long remembered in his heart, at the same time he also learned that Li Ka-shing likes to eat traditional Chaoshan cuisine, for which he specially cooked dishes such as steamed Su mei, salted lemon stewed duck and other dishes, each time made Li Ka-shing praised.
Adhering to the life motto of "be careful, be sincere to people, and have a heart to cook", in 1997, Dai Long stood out among more than 200,000 chefs in Hong Kong and became one of the four chefs in charge of the 97 return banquet. Whenever he talks about this experience, he is proud to have witnessed this history.
Dai Long himself did not expect that he would one day walk out of the kitchen and walk onto the screen. In 1994, Dai Long worked at the Golden Leaf Pavilion Restaurant in Hong Kong, where Stephen Chow happened to be a regular. Dai Long, who is fashionably dressed and has superb cooking skills, has attracted the attention of Xingye, and during the conversation, Dai Long's experience has made Zhou Xingchi have a lot of feelings.
Dai Long once recalled that he took the initiative to propose to Zhou Xingchi to make a movie about Chinese chefs, because the chefs in many hotels at that time were foreigners, and the status of Chinese chefs was always different from theirs. Zhou Xingchi is very good at interpreting the stories of small people in life, and Dai Long suggested that he make a chef-themed movie, which not only allows more people to understand the profound food culture, but also enables the public to change their views on small people such as "chefs".
It was this conversation that inspired Zhou Xingchi to create the classic work "God Eater".
Later, in the movie, the role of the God Eater is full of dailong's shadow, and even the recipes that appear in it are mostly provided by Dailong.
During the filming of the film, Zhou Xingchi also invited Dai Long to make a cameo at the beginning of the film. And it was this little test of water that Dai Long found that in addition to cooking, there are many possibilities and attempts in his life, such as acting.
He brought his spirit of daring to try in cooking to his acting career, unwilling to stick to his old line of work, but constantly explore his broader plasticity, which led to the rich guest who later fell in love with Cecilia Cheung in "The King of Comedy", Shu Qi's domineering real estate developer father Luo Qihui in "A Dragon of Luck".
Stills from the movie "A Dragon of Fortune"
The play can also help him develop his own dishes, such as "foie gras shrimp balls". This dish was conceived by Dai Long in 1996 after completing the filming of "God Eater", according to the "explosive pulp set urine beef pills" "developed" by Karen Mok and Zhou Xingchi in the play, which not only has the elasticity of the "Seti urine beef balls" in the movie, but also the mellowness of foie gras and the deliciousness of shrimp, which is enough to make anorexia patients have their fingers moved.
But despite his early career in show business, Dai Long knew he wouldn't give up his favorite cooking.
Dai Long was a guest on the variety show "Please the Refrigerator"
Over the years, Dai Long has an in-depth understanding of the traditional culture of catering, familiar with the nature of the ingredients, and he dares to try, to understand the different ways of eating, the traditions and characteristics of different cuisines, and then to integrate and innovate, and strive to make it conform to the ever-changing food trend, and truly be a person, sincere, and dish.
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