She was afraid of eels. Yet every week, she cooked stir-fried shredded eel for us.
Growing up, our weekly family gatherings always meant a table full of dishes prepared by my grandmother. Her Shanghai-style stir-fried eel was everyone’s favorite. I often helped her prepare the eels on the balcony. It was only years later that I discovered she had always been afraid of them.
This week, I received a special certificate from UNESCO and Lee Kum Kee. The story of my grandmother’s Shanghai-style stir-fried eel was selected for the Forever Flavors Project’s culinary memory archive. Although my grandmother is no longer with us, the love she expressed through cooking has found another way to live on.
Every dish has a story. Some carry the memories of a family, others reflect history, while some preserve the culinary heritage of generations.
Speaking of culinary heritage, Chef Ricky Kong stands out in Hong Kong. A third-generation chef and president of the Hong Kong Chinese Chefs Association, Kong is dedicated to passing Chinese culinary traditions on to the next generation.
Kong designed a banquet celebrating Hong Kong’s intangible cultural heritage, incorporating traditional techniques and ingredients into each dish. One creation paired shrimp paste with premium sea cucumber, bringing a humble local flavor into fine dining. Kong also brings Chinese literature to the dining table. Inspired by Dream of the Red Chamber, his nine-course banquet brought the novel’s twelve female characters to life through food, with each course accompanied by a poem.
My grandmother cooked out of selfless love for us, while Kong keeps culinary traditions alive. Both remind me that food carries more than flavor.
A dish may be gone in minutes, but the love, memories, and cultural heritage it carries can live on for generations.
Isabelle Hon traded her Hong Kong editor’s desk for Canadian kitchens, bringing a writer’s eye and a chef’s grit to stories that connect East and West
