Ming Tsai

Ming Tsai

Born	March 29, 1964 (1964-03-29) (age 47) Newport Beach, California, United States
Cooking style	Chinese
Education	Le Cordon Bleu, Cornell University, Yale University
Current restaurant(s) Blue Ginger (Wellesley)
Television show(s) East Meets West, Ming’s Quest, Simply Ming

Ming Tsai (Chinese: 蔡明昊; pinyin: Cài Mínghào; born on March 29, 1964) is a Chinese-American fusion cuisine chef, restaurateur, and Emmy Award-winning television personality.

Tsai currently hosts Ming's Quest, a cooking show featured on the Fine Living Network, and Simply Ming on American Public Television. He was eliminated in week 7 of the third season of the Food Network's cooking competition, The Next Iron Chef.^[1]

Biography

Early life

Tsai was born in California, but raised in Dayton, Ohio, where he attended The Miami Valley School. He often helped his parents Stephen and Iris with their family restaurant, Mandarin Kitchen. Ming's maternal grandfather is the renowned Chinese conductor Dr. Baochen Li; his paternal grandfather graduated from the Department of Economics at Peking University. Tsai's uncle and brother are mechanical engineers.^{[citation needed]}

Tsai transferred to Phillips Academy and later Yale University where he graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. Later, he received a master's degree in hotel administration and hospitality marketing from Cornell University.

Ming Tsai speaks four languages: English, Spanish, French, and Mandarin Chinese.

Tsai is married and has two sons.

Career

In 1998 Tsai, along with his wife Polly (née Talbott), opened his first restaurant, Blue Ginger, in Wellesley, Massachusetts. Ming also hosted a half hour cooking show on the Food Network called "East meets West" from 1998 - 2003. On the show, he presented a blend of Asian-European fusion cuisine. Ming is the author of three cookbooks: Blue Ginger, Simply Ming, and Ming's Master Recipes.

In his PBS show Simply Ming, Tsai often uses ceramic cooking knives and tools manufactured by Kyocera Advanced Ceramics. On occasion, usually when in the Boston area doing business in his restaurant Blue Ginger, Tsai can be heard on the radio station WAAF 107.3 as a call in and sometimes as an in-studio guest on "The Hillman Morning Show", in November, 2006, he was part of an "Egg Nog Challenge" against another well known Chef and Morning Show Regular Spaz.

During the summer of 2004, Ming Tsai participated in a "Zoom Out" on ZOOM, a show sponsored by PBS. In addition, he has been a guest star on the PBS children's television show Arthur in the episode "What's Cooking?". Tsai also guest starred on an episode of Top Chef. In 2000, Ming was #16 on People Magazine's Most Beautiful People list.

Tsai battled Bobby Flay in Iron Chef America Season 1, battle duck, and won.

In March 2010 Tsai opened Blue Ginger Noodle Bar, a mini-restaurant, inside Blue Ginger.^[2]

Chef Tsai competed to be the "Next Iron Chef" on the Food Network Channel. He was eliminated from the final four in Las Vegas semi-final.

Tsai is a national spokesman for FAAN (Food Allergy & Anaphylaxis Network); one of his sons has food allergies. He was the first chef in the United States to create a reference book that lists each allergen for every menu item. In 2010, Massachusetts became the first state to mandate that restaurants advise diners about food allergies and advise diners to notify servers of allergies, train staff on food allergies, and that managers have awareness training [1].

Sports

Tsai was a squash player at Yale, playing No. 2 for the team, and named as an All-Ivy League player in 1986. While attending culinary school in France, Tsai played professionally on the European circuit.

His squash coach at Yale, David Talbott, is now his brother-in-law, as is the legendary Mark Talbott, a former World No. 1 hardball squash player. In 2004 Tsai played a celebrity squash match against professional golfer Brad Faxon at a Boston squash club. In 2005 he played against Mark Talbott in a charity match at a squash club in San Francisco.

Notes

1. ^ http://www.foodnetwork.com/chefs/ming-tsai-nc3-rival/index.html
2. ^ "Ming Tsai Noodles Around at Blue Ginger". Zagat. March 18, 2010. http://www.zagat.com/Blog/entrylist.aspx?SNP=NB&SCID=34&HID=boston_buzz_top_sub. 

External links

	Asian Americans portal
	Food portal
	Biography portal

• Official website
• Simply Ming website
• Bio on "The Next Iron Chef"

Persondata
Name	Tsai, Ming
Alternative names
Short description	American restaurateur
Date of birth	March 29, 1964
Place of birth	Newport Beach, California, United States
Date of death
Place of death