Ming Tsai

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Ming Tsai

Born	March 29, 1964 (1964-03-29) (age 44) Newport Beach, California, U.S.
Cooking style	Chinese
Education	Le Cordon Bleu
Current Restaurant(s) Blue Ginger (Wellesley)
Television show(s) East Meets West, Ming’s Quest, Simply Ming

Ming Tsai (born March 29, 1964, Newport Beach, California) is an American fusion cuisine chef and restaurateur who currently hosts two cooking shows – Ming's Quest on the Fine Living television channel and Simply Ming on American Public Television – and formerly hosted East Meets West on the Food Network, for which he won an Emmy Award. He has also appeared as a challenger chef on the Food Network's Iron Chef America beating Iron Chef Bobby Flay in "Battle Duck" and was a judge for Cooking Under Fire on the PBS network.

In 1998, Tsai, along with his wife Polly (neé Talbott), opened his first restaurant, Blue Ginger, in Wellesley, Massachusetts, U.S.. He is the author of three cookbooks: Blue Ginger, Simply Ming, and Ming's Master Recipes.

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. Tsai recently guest starred on an episode of Top Chef.

1 Education
2 Family
3 Sports
4 Trivia
5 Notes
6 External links

[edit] Education

Tsai is a Dayton, Ohio native (his family having moved there from Newport Beach, California), where he graduated from The Miami Valley School. He grew up working with his parents Steve and Iris in their family restaurant, Mandarin Kitchen.

From Dayton, Tsai also attended Phillips Academy and 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.

[edit] Family

Ming's maternal grandfather is the renowned Chinese conductor Dr. Baochen Li, his paternal grandfather graduated from the Department of Economics at Beijing University, and his uncle and brother are mechanical engineers. ^[1]

Ming's father, Dr. Stephen W. Tsai, is a Professor Research Emeritus, Aeronautics and Astronautics, at Stanford University and is also a graduate of Yale University. ^[2]

[edit] Sports

Tsai was a formidable 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. After returning to the U.S. Tsai was an elite player known for his speed, conditioning, and tenacity. 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.

[edit] Trivia

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Ming Tsai's Chinese name is 蔡明昊 (Pinyin: Cài Mínghào).

In his PBS show Simply Ming, until the 2007-2008 season, Tsai often used ceramic cooking knives manufactured by Kyocera.

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.