Offering his hand, the Dayton-raised Food Network celebrity chef and restaurant owner smiled as he inquired, “And you are?” The waiter introduced himself and added, “I wish my shift had not just ended; I would have loved to serve our food to you.”
“And I would be happy to eat it,” Tsai said.
The encounter was just what one who has watched Tsai’s award winning PBS program, “Simply Ming,” would expect.
The 46-year-old Tsai — who visited his hometown of Dayton last month to promote his newest book, “Simply Ming One-Pot Meals: Quick, Healthy & Affordable Recipes” (Kyle Books, $24.95) — is widely recognized for his friendly, comfortable and simple approach to both food and television.
The chef, who participated in the Food Network’s most recent “The Next Iron Chef,” insists that he did not figure out why this book, his fourth, was so important to him until after is was complete.
“I realized the book is two things for me,” Tsai said. “It’s getting people to cook. The major issues of cooking are prep time and clean up. There is nothing more discouraging after cooking a good dinner than to see five pots that need cleaning. I want to encourage people to get into the kitchen to cook. I think these recipes do that, because they are tasty, which is the prime concern.
“But the second thing is that these recipes are affordable. At the end of the day, if you show people how they can cook things easily, they’ll realize that you can cook a healthy meal for five bucks a person. Heck, you can get a value pack of chicken thighs at the grocery for fourteen bucks, and you can feed ten people.”
The book also includes instruction in various cooking methods utilizing a wok. “I think if you teach people techniques, you teach them how to cook,” Tsai said.
Tsai — who now owns the Blue Ginger restaurant in Wellesley, Mass. and lives nearby — said he hopes his new cookbook helps families decide to “sit down to eat dinner together.”
“Growing up at my house, 5 o’clock (meant) dinner with the family, no questions asked,” he said. “We discussed everything, school, girlfriends, sports, everything about our lives. We still do it today. I’ll go into the restaurant to do prep work, then back home for dinner” with wife Polly, and the couple’s two sons, ages 10 and 8. “Then, I’ll go back to Blue Ginger for dinner service.”
During his visit to Books & Co. at The Greene, Tsai took time to reflect on the region he left behind for his high-profile culinary career.
“By far the warmest reception I get is from the people here. Dayton was the greatest place in the world to grow up,” Tsai said. “I owe a lot of my success to it. This is where my value system was created.”
And it’s also where he first displayed some early entrepreneurship skills, while attending Kettering’s Southdale Elementary school.
“I used to cross Dorothy Lane before going to school. I would go to the Stop ‘N Go and buy boxes of Hot Tamales, for five cents apiece. Lunch was forty cents back then, but everybody brought two quarters, so everybody had a dime. After lunch, I’d ask, ‘Who wants a box of Hot Tamales? Ten cents each!’ I sold out every time.”
Tsai started his culinary career cooking at his mother’s restaurant: the Mandarin Kitchen in downtown Dayton’s Arcade Square.
“Mom’s place was my first real restaurant job, and was a significant part of my development. I realized that if you serve good, tasty food at a reasonable price, with a smile, the customer will come back,” Tsai said. And that’s what he still does at the Blue Ginger.
“It’s so simple, but it’s amazing how many places don’t do it. The best thing for me is when a customer says that they just had the best food of their life. For that two hours, they may have come in angry; they may hate their job, but for that time, we changed their life and made them happy.”
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