Fusing Faith with Food – Big Brother Biu’s Seafood Restaurant (1)
I asked Chef Tong Li whether he thought that God was always with him, even before he came to know and accept Jesus Christ. The answer was a resounding yes.
The first cuisine with which Chef Tong Li would make his name was the snake soup. And to make snake soup, he would first have to learn how to kill live snakes. Chef Tong Li thus served as an apprentice in the snake shop.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, in the streets of Hong Kong there were snake shops that kept live snakes for sale. There were a few steps to prepare the snakes before serving them in a soup. They had their fangs removed first, then they were killed, skinned, the gall had to be removed (usually for making wine), then the meat had to be shredded and cooked.
The snake shops distinguished the snakes by whether their fangs have been removed. A number of snakes would be kept alive after their fangs were removed, because ingredients were considered fresh only if they were slaughtered right before they were cooked. The practice was to keep the ones with fangs removed in one designated drawer, and the ones still with their fangs in another. As such, these snake shops had drawers wall-to-wall, each with a spring door that kept the snakes in.
One afternoon, Chef Tong Li was alone in the shop. He decided that it was a good opportunity to take a photo with the snakes. Chef Tong Li was camera-ready on that day. He was about to take a selfie with the snake from the fangs-off drawer. But his camera was not ready. It needed new batteries. When Chef Tong Li returned, his coworker was back in the shop. He casually asked, “this is the drawer with the snakes without the fangs right?”
“No, we swapped the two boxes last night. These snakes have fangs.”
Chef Tong Li was stunned. He could have already been killed.
“The Lion Rock Spirit” refers to a particular mentality of the Hong Kong people during the 1970s and 1980s. It was the spirit of perseverance, hard work, strength and solidarity with which the humble people of Hong Kong survived, and eventually succeeded, during this period of economic takeoff.
Chef Tong Li made very good snake soup. Yet, like many others with humble beginnings, he did not have the funds to rent or buy a restaurant. He had yet to make his name in a crowded field. In those times, many entrepreneurs began by selling on the street in a wooden food cart. Yet Chef Tong Li could not swallow his pride.
His wife said, “I will push the cart and sell the soup for you.” She was a few months pregnant with their first son then. So she pushed a wooden food cart from Sau Mau Ping to Kwun Tong to sell snake soup. By walk, the journey would take more than thirty minutes for a normal adult.
Business was good indeed. In those days, food of the street carts would sell for 1 dollar, 2 dollars a piece. Chef Tong Li’s snake soup was going for 5 dollars. After a few days, he decided that he would join his wife on the street. Slowly, they saved up the money needed for a rented space to sell the snake soup.
Chef Tong Li named his restaurant after his son, whose name is Chun Biu Li. That was because the name Biu would bring better fortune. Snake King Biu’s Restaurant thrived for a very long time until the SARS epidemic.
Chef Tong Li became Christian during the SARS epidemic of 2003. Perhaps not surprisingly, as a chef and a businessman he was once very superstitious. He worshipped the gods of all trades. He did every kind of fortune telling, in order to make sure that business was good.
Snake King Biu’s Restaurant was a neighborhood restaurant that served Cantonese cuisine the traditional way. Along the same lines as with the snake soup, with which Chef Tong Li made his first bucket of gold, the restaurant served game.
And it was the game that gave Snake King Biu’s Restaurant the kiss of death during the SARS epidemic. Not long after the epidemic broke out, researchers found out that the virus came from bats. Researchers theorized that the virus passed onto people via the intermediate host of civet cats. His restaurant took the brunt, because it sold game as its specialty. People shunned these restaurants particularly, let alone the fact that all of Hong Kong closed down during that time. Decades of hard work and pride went down the drain.
Although he resisted many times, Chef Tong Li finally accepted the invitation by a reverend to attend church service. He told himself, “sure, for just this one time I will go, and never again.”
The message of the sermon hit him. The reverend preached about men’s sinfulness, and God’s wrath on men’s stubborn refusal to repent. Chef Tong Li remembered his thoughts, “he is talking about me here, all my problems!” Though not without reluctance, Chef Tong Li accepted Jesus Christ, with remorse over his former life.
His wife managed to line up funds from the government’s relief programs. For the time being, the restaurant survived. Fellow church members assisted Chef Tong Li with renovating the restaurant. He changed the former name of Snake King Biu into Big Brother Biu’s Seafood Restaurant, which served to distance the brand from game-related cuisine. Chef Tong Li also called back his son and daughter, who were studying abroad at the time. In due course, they would take up the restaurant fully.
Chef Tong Li was young in his faith, but he wanted to praise God with his culinary expertise. Every year after he turned to Christ, he would host a banquet to celebrate his birthday as a Christian. His menu featured a dish, “Five Loaves and Two Fish.” He prepared his two fish by frying two kinds of fresh water catch. Then he made the five loaves with a meatloaf. As he rested, he was sure that this would please the Lord.
“The Five Loaves and Two Fish is not yet perfect,” a voice said to Chef Tong Li.
“What!” Chef Tong Li was angry when he heard that. He had done his very best to dedicate this to the Lord, how could it be not perfect? He asked why, but received no answer.
So he decided to seek out the Bible. It must have been the Lord speaking to him. He revisited Mark 6, and read till the very end, carefully.
“They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish.” Mark 6: 42-43.
Chef Tong Li was amazed. He missed the twelve baskets. The Lord was right, his dish was not complete without the twelve baskets!
To make the baskets, he used oranges, because the skin of oranges would be sturdy to hold a wok-fried filling. He praised the Lord. This inspiration of the twelve baskets could have only come from God.
In the immediate few years after Chef Tong Li turned to Jesus Christ, he experienced a period of creativity and rewards. He joined Hong Kong’s cooking contests and won gold for two years consecutively.
Photo: the accolades are proudly on display at Big Brother Biu’s Seafood Restaurant.
There was no going back to his previous life of worshiping the gods of all trades. He found his true faith — and fused it with food.
Sources:
Interview with Chef Tong Li of Brother Biu’s Restaurant.
Interview with Chun Biu Li and Cindy Li of Brother Biu’s Restaurant, The Gold-Plated Plaque, Metro Radio, 176th Session (in Chinese).
Tong Li, the Undefeated Playbook of a Chef (in Chinese) (2014).