Cha Chaan Teng

Chef, writer, culinary educator, and Food & Wine Best New Chef, 2021, Lucas Sin writes his debut cookbook on Hong Kong-style comfort food.

The cha chaan teng-Hong Kong's iconic neighborhood diner-is where the city has always fed itself. Born from the collision of Chinese cooking, Western influence, and a century of migration and colonial exchange, the restaurants serve everyone from day laborers to schoolchildren, and the food is some of the most beloved in the world: Baked Pork Chop Rice and Beef Chow Fun, Pineapple Buns and Coconut Tarts, Milk Tea, Red Bean Ice, and more.

Lucas Sin has spent years documenting the food of Hong Kong's cha chaan teng with the rigor of an anthropologist and the instincts of a cook, learning these recipes from the chefs who've spent careers refining them. The result is 128 recipes of comfort food made with the same eye for detail as anything in a fine-dining kitchen. These are some of the most satisfying dishes you'll ever make: crisp, custardy egg tarts, three variations of Hong Kong-style French toast, and stir-fries with real wok hei. This is the ultimate collection of Hong Kong's favorite food-affordable, generous, and unfettered in its deliciousness.

About the Author

Lucas Sin is a chef from Hong Kong working to bring focus and a deeper understanding to Asian cuisine worldwide. He began his culinary career at the age of 16 in Hong Kong and went on to run restaurants out of his dorm at Yale. He cooked at Modernist Cuisine in Seattle, Kikunoi Honten in Kyoto, and Michelin-starred kitchens in Hong Kong and New York before co-founding Junzi Kitchen and Nice Day Chinese, two casual Chinese restaurant brands based in New York and Connecticut with the goal of revitalizing Chinese cuisine in America.

Lucas has been named a Forbes 30 under 30, a Food and Wine Best New Chef, a Star Chef Rising Star, and an Eater Young Gun. He divides his time between New York and Hong Kong, serving as a culinary educator on shows found on YouTube, including National Geographic, Food52, and Bon Appetit, for which he won a James Beard Media Award.