This up-and-coming Singaporean female chef helms the wok at one-Michelin-starred Summer Pavilion 

Chef Melissa Tsang very clearly remembers her first job interview at a Chinese restaurant. Fresh out of culinary school, she applied for a role at Crystal Jade Golden Palace as a junior prep cook. She remembers the chef, an elderly Hong Kong gentleman, looking at her in silence for a really long time.

“Finally, his first question was just, ‘Why?’ He didn’t ask me anything else.” After a few awkward minutes, she answered, “I just want to do it.” This earned her her first job in a Cantonese kitchen. 

Breaking down gender stereotypes as one of the few women to cook in a Cantonese fine-dining restaurant in Singapore — let alone at the all-important wok station — hadn’t been a lifelong goal for Tsang.

In fact, the 32-year-old had studied to become a lawyer, something she’d pursued more for her parents than for herself. Realising she had no interest in it, she quit after a year and a half, and took up a variety of part-time jobs, while trying to decide what to do next.

They ended up in F&B, and while she found the environment fast-paced and intense, she also loved it. At a friend’s suggestion, she then enrolled in Sunrice Globalchef Academy in 2015.

After watching chef Huang Xihong, “a tiny lady who taught all the dim sum and Chinese cuisine modules”, cook fried rice with a commercial wok, Tsang decided she wanted to find out all she could about cooking with a wok. “She was just so cool,” she gushes.

However, her classmates ridiculed her aspirations to cook with a wok, and instructors told her she wouldn’t last a week in a Chinese kitchen. Yet, all this made her more determined. So Tsang embarked on her research outside of school, devouring books on Chinese cuisine by chefs Fuchsia Dunlop and Eileen Yin-Fei Lo, as well as others written in Cantonese, which she slowly had to figure out on her own. 

The Cantonese cuisine industry is highly male-dominated, and Tsang questioned her ability to be a part of it because she had never seen anyone like herself in such a position. “I remember asking the head chef at my first job, ‘Is it even possible for me (a woman) to learn this?’ I didn’t have a blueprint.” 

Canto kitchen confidential

Working at Crystal Jade Golden Palace was eye-opening, with Tsang likening it to “having someone teach you the entire skeleton of a whole other universe.” She learned how to read order tickets — all printed in Chinese — as well as the written shortcuts that indicate guest requests. 

The plucky chef pursued her interest in the wok, learning from colleagues whenever they could carve out time during their shifts and practising as much as she could on her own.

Today, Tsang is a ‘first fryer’ cook at one-Michelin-starred Cantonese restaurant, Summer Pavilion. She likens working the wok to the “house of fire”, noting that she had to go from learning to read tickets and steam dishes to making double-boiled soups before she eventually made it to the wok. Then she learned deep-frying and stir-frying rice and noodle dishes.

“For dishes that involve more expensive ingredients, a quicker hand, and pinpoint accuracy in seasoning and cooking time. For example, stir-fried marble goby is a notoriously difficult dish where the margin for error is very thin,” she shares. 

Her favourite aspect of cooking with a wok? “It is easy to use — once you get used to it. You can sear, braise, saute, boil, blanch, and deep-fry with it,” she says. 

She also explains that wok hei, the magical smoky flavour that comes with cooking in a wok, results from moisture reacting with oil over high heat, rather than from the wok itself. “The wok traps heat and smoke exceptionally well, but it’s up to the user to generate it. With incorrect technique, a dish can have an undesirable ‘burnt’ smell or have little to no aroma at all,” she says. 

Mastering the wok

She credits the chef at Crystal Jade Golden Palace for getting her started on cooking with a wok. He taught her to fold the cloth used to grasp the wok, and how to hold it. “It puts a lot of pressure and stress on the wrist, thumb, and finger joints,” she says. “There are a lot of physical issues that come along with trying to get used to holding the wok.”

A standard, 19-inch commercial wok weighs just over 2kg and takes a lot of practice to hold and manoeuvre. “It’s challenging for the uninitiated mostly because you have to maintain excellent control of that weighted object, while it might contain smoking hot oil or boiling liquid,” says Tsang, explaining how she suffered from carpal tunnel syndrome at the beginning.

“It took a couple of years to ease off, and honestly, I think it was just pure, brutal conditioning.” 

She cites time and experience in learning to become more efficient and effective at cooking. “For example, we naturally let the weight-bearing hand (the one that holds the wok) relax when it’s not really necessary to grip the wok.” 

At the same time, she acknowledges that the first few years were very difficult, experiencing feelings of isolation, loneliness and insecurity. At times, it was hard not to wonder if she had made a mistake. “In most cases, the men in this line of work did not really elect to work in this trade, often coming by it by family, friends, or siblings,” she explains. “So I constantly felt like a fish out of water socially.” 

Despite this, Tsang found that while she might have felt like an outsider at the start, people were always willing to teach if you were willing to listen. “Once you are familiar with them, and once you start asking, people are quite happy to share, as long as time permits.”

Stepping up to the plate

Tsang’s first official job as a wok cook was at East Bistro, a small Cantonese restaurant run by chef Tony Wong, who had previously worked with Summer Pavilion’s chef Cheung Siu Kong at Lei Garden in Hong Kong. “It was the most intense, stressful, nerve-wracking time of my life,” she recalls.

“It just hits different when it’s finally your full-time, paying job to cook things to order for guests who are paying. It was the most intense year of my life, but I learned so much.”

Before that, Tsang had already done a stint at Summer Pavilion under Cheung, but when a line chef position at the wok station opened in 2022, she applied to return. “(Chef Cheung) is rather pioneering in his thinking,” she says thoughtfully.

“He’s never been like, ‘Oh, you can’t do it because you’re a woman’, he believes everyone has to find their own way. He mentors and gives general instructions, but ultimately it’s like learning to ride a bike — you’re going to have to fall several times to get good at it.”

At Summer Pavilion, Tsang is responsible for cooking its signature dishes such as Poached Rice with Canadian Lobster Meat and Sautéed Diced Beef in Red Wine and Black Pepper Sauce.

Her favourite dish to cook, however, is the traditional stir-fried flat rice noodles with beef. “It’s the holistic test of a cook’s competence at heat control and seasoning,” she says enthusiastically. “The ingredients are simple, but the technique involved is humbling. I love it because it’s so difficult to perfect, but that’s also why I’m obsessed with it.”

Through Chef Cheung, Tsang has also had the opportunity to expand her range and understanding beyond Cantonese cuisine by getting her highly involved in the restaurant’s various collaborations with visiting chefs. 

Working alongside other chefs has been transformational for her. “You get a front seat to other people’s experiences and see other ways of doing things from slicing to sauce prep and, more importantly, other ways of presenting a dish.”

It’s something she has thoroughly enjoyed. She’s also currently doing the Italian Wine Scholar programme and debating whether to pursue further wine studies.

Despite her success, Tsang is modest and hyper-aware that her position in the kitchen plays a broader role in encouraging women to envision themselves in such a job. “I think for my colleagues, it’s changed their thinking a bit. It’s no longer, ‘There is no such thing as a woman who works in a Chinese kitchen.’ I guess I’m no longer an outsider to them.” 

She also stops short of saying she has “mastered” the wok. “Chef Cheung once mentioned to me that perfection is a myth, and we aspire to it, but ultimately there is only “better”, never “best”. But I’m not discouraged by the idea of “falling short”, in fact, I prefer it, because then there’s always room for improvement.

If it’s a dish that intimidates me, then I look forward to making it for the very first time. If it’s a dish I’ve made hundreds of times, then I look forward to making it faster, and even closer to ‘perfect’.”

It also makes her think back to her first job and the elderly gentleman who interviewed her. “He used to come into the kitchen from time to time, surveying very silently,” she says.

“He would always end up beside me and be like, ‘Oh, you’re still here’, every single week for months. And then eventually, he just stopped asking, and I’m still here.”