We talk to the man behind the Michelin-starred Kym’s in the capital.

Since taking over his parents’ restaurant in Pimlico, central London, six years ago almost by accident, chef Mr Andrew Wong has turned a no-nonsense family Chinese eatery into a Michelin-starred critics’ favourite. This is no mean feat. The mysterious Michelin inspectors have bestowed their arguably arbitrary award (no one, potentially not even them, knows the criteria they use) to only four other purveyors of Chinese food in the capital. In the process, Mr Wong has sought to explore what that catch-all term means. Not a lot, when you can have wildly different dishes from Xinjiang, Sichuan or Shanghai. And it is this variety that his inventive menu at A Wong so successfully celebrates. “There is more to Chinese culture than sweet and sour sauce and Bruce Lee,” he says.

On 2 October, the chef-turned-restaurateur is opening his second venture, in the Bloomberg Arcade in the City. A more laidback affair, Kym’s (the name of his grandmother and of A Wong before he took over) celebrates the ancient craft of Chinese roasting and it will offer a “Grab & Go” menu – takeaway, he says, is something that brings a sense of community to a restaurant.

We caught up with Mr Wong to see what he had to say about Kym’s (“I’m not sure excited is the right word; scared is the overwhelming feeling”) and his thoughts on food and cooking in general.

To tell you the truth, I never wanted to be a chef at all.

I grew up in my family’s restaurant. I used to do extra maths homework to avoid working in the kitchen. Back in the 1980s, being a restaurateur wasn’t top of the agenda. I went to university. I studied chemistry at Oxford and I studied social anthropology at LSE. While I was studying, my father passed away, so I fell into it to help my mum out. It’s strange how life turns out.

Lots of my friends were working all around China.

I would spend a few months in a hotel in Beijing. Or I would go to work with a friend in Sichuan. In the back of my mind I had a vague idea of putting together a restaurant menu. I was building up a knowledge base and understanding how different parts of the Chinese kitchen works. Chinese kitchens are divided in very specific ways and Chinese chefs are proud about their particular techniques, style or region.

**At A Wong we want to show that Chinese food is not a single entity.

**As a term, it’s meaningless. We want to highlight the nuances. In Xinjiang, a western part of China, the people look more central Asian and they are Muslim. In Chinese, the word for meat is the same as the word for pork. But the entire region of Xinjiang, which equates to a third of China, doesn’t eat pork. That’s just a small part of the varied story of Chinese gastronomy.

I don’t claim to be doing anything better than those who do a Chinese takeaway.

I think food evolves. The food you get in more local Chinese restaurants, that’s a 2018 version as it meets British culture.

**We want people to rethink the way they look at dim sum.

**In the old family restaurant people used to say, “I want a number 66 and a 72.” And when the food arrived, they’d eat three dishes in one mouthful. We want people to celebrate Chinese food, culture and heritage. I don’t want to preach or teach. I want people to enjoy it.

Chinese food can be on a par with any other food that’s seen as fine.

A lot of international chefs are massively interested in the techniques that we use. They realise that it produces unique end products and it’s stuff they’ve never interacted with before. Once chefs start to use this knowledge, people will take note.

A Michelin star is for the chef and the team.

It’s similar to the build-up for your wedding. You imagine that your life is going to be so different afterwards, but you wake up in the morning and it’s pretty much the same. But you know it’s a little bit better. There are 16,000 Chinese restaurants in the UK alone. It sets you apart.

Kym’s celebrates a different part of the Chinese kitchen.

The ancient art of low-temperature Chinese roasting. You can find etchings on walls all over China from 2,500 years back showing these techniques. In 2018, with all the gadgets in the world, chefs still can’t replicate this technique we use to make things such as Cantonese crispy pork belly. We’re trying to recreate that old-school Chinese restaurant atmosphere. We’ll also do takeaway. I love the idea of catering for people who want to take the food home.

**Kym’s was the name of A Wong when my parents were in charge.

**It’s my grandmother’s name, so it’s massively personal. Kym’s is a culmination of all of our work over the past six years. This is the restaurant my dad would have wanted to open.

Opening a restaurant in London is scary.

A hawker stall in Singapore won a Michelin star a couple of years ago and it does soy chicken and honey roast pork. We have a larger menu, but it’s not so dissimilar. If that place can pick up traction internationally, let’s see how we do.

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