Maia, a six-star resort and spa on the island of Mahé in the Seychelles, is an exclusive getaway for those who value their privacy. The resort’s guests include European royalty and millionaires. To get to this luxurious hideaway, you need to board a private plane to the island of Mahé where a helicopter will take you to the resort. The resort has just 30 villas accommodating up to 60 guests. One night at Maia will set you back at least NT$150,000.

Maia’s kitchen is teeming with blond Westerners in stiff white cook’s uniforms. Only one Asian sticks out with his black-haired crew cut. It’s Andre Chiang – Maia’s chef.

At the tender age of 20, Chiang was already working as a chef in a five-star French restaurant. Time magazine twice reported about his culinary skills, praising his creations as “the greatest food in the Indian Ocean.” Discovery Channel featured him as one of Asia’s best young chefs in 2006, and the same year, restaurant guide Relais and Chateaux included him among the 150 best chefs in the world.

The 31-year-old Chiang actually hails from Taiwan, where he grew up in the Shilin district of northern Taipei.

Chasing an Ideal

This is not the story of a culinary genius.

Chiang did not grow up in a rich family. But his mother, who once worked in a Chinese restaurant in Japan for ten years, knew how to cook up a good meal.

At school Chiang always boasted the largest and most abundant lunchbox. Chiang’s mom would never heat up a readymade lunchbox. Instead, she would cook from scratch just half an hour before lunchtime and then deliver the steaming hot food directly to the school door by motorbike.

Lunch and dinnertime is when Chiang is most content: “Food is a thing that completes your day, that gives you the feeling that this day is perfect. It’s the most primal sensation. It’s the motivation that made me want to become a cook,” he recalls.

Chiang started to work at large restaurants when just 13 years old. In senior high school Chiang studied restaurant management. After class at 4 p.m. he would take the same bus with his schoolmates to Taipei’s North Gate. But Chiang would always get off first, because he went to work at the Hilton Hotel, whereas his schoolmates flocked to the entertainment district of Ximending.

Having honed his culinary skills at big hotels such as the Hilton and the Landis Taipei, Chiang became chef at the Sherwood Hotel Taipei’s French restaurant at the age of 20, the youngest French restaurant chef that Taiwan had ever seen.

“He has an unrivalled passion for his profession, abundant creativity and taste,” says Achim von Hake, general manager at the Sherwood Hotel, relating his strong impression of Chiang.

Destiny knocked on Chiang’s door when he was 21.

“I never felt that I was a genius. I am very diligent, extremely diligent,” is how Andre Chiang describes himself.

Back then the Sherwood used to invite famous French chefs to Taipei once or twice a year to demonstrate their culinary art. Chiang did his best to have the hotel invite the great chef duo, twin brothers Jacques and Laurent Pourcel, then the most famous chefs in southern France, to Taipei. Chiang worked with the master chefs for ten days.

Afterwards, the brothers asked him, “Do you want to go to France?”

Without batting an eyelid Chiang said, “Okay!”

Back then Chiang did not speak a single word of French, while the Pourcel brothers did not speak any English, so they had to communicate via an interpreter.

But Chiang felt that he was up to the task and that there was nothing he couldn’t achieve. “In Taiwan people would say you are great, you did a great job. You get used to being applauded,” he says.

In Taiwan Chiang seemed to have reached the sky and did not know where to find a new career challenge. “Having come that far in Taiwan at age 20, what was I supposed to do at 30? My options were very limited, because there weren’t many opportunities for another breakthrough on the career ladder,” Chiang recalls.

So Chiang decided to sell his motorbike, and took out his entire savings of NT$150,000 to make a new start in France.

There he worked 16- to 18-hour days, every day, getting just three to four hours of sleep at night. In the first year he did not make a single franc, had only a place to sleep, without air conditioning or heating. Chiang worked 365 days a year without interruption, because taking a day off meant having to pay for his own food.

Aside from working hard Chiang felt the greatest pressure from the many outstanding cooks who worked alongside the Pourcel brothers. Anyone who made it into the kitchen of the twin brothers’ three-Michelin-star restaurant was handpicked from the best of the trade. “I wouldn’t be able to outdo anyone, not even when it came to washing vegetables,” Chiang says of his humble beginnings.

Chiang was the only Asian in the kitchen, while all the others were French. People were watching and wondering, why is this yellow-skinned person working here? What qualifies him to work in France?

The head chef would get red in the face scolding him, but Chiang wouldn’t understand a word. The head chef would bang the table in anger, and he still would not get it. “You’re anxious and about to collapse, but you still don’t understand, you don’t known what he wants. I think that’s the most frightening situation,” Chiang says about his arduous apprenticeship.

That year Chiang lost 16 kilograms, even though he ate a lot, since the mental stress took its toll.

Success Is Tough, Constant Success Even Tougher

The Pourcel brothers felt even more than Chiang himself that the French regarded him as someone peculiar, but they never told him to pack up and go.

“They never gave up on me, so why should I give up first? They didn’t say anything, so how could I say I don’t want to do it?” Chiang recalls this tough stretch in his career.

Chiang learned one thing from the French. The Pourcel brothers grew up in a small town in southern France and began to cook at age 15. At 23 they opened their restaurant, Le Jardin de Sens (Garden of the Senses) outside Montpellier, and managed to become the most famous chefs in southern France within just a decade, when Le Guide Michelin honored them with three stars, the youngest French restaurant chefs ever to be so highly decorated.

But even today the passionate master chefs still spend 16 hours a day in their kitchen, doing what they did ten years ago. “Succeeding is very difficult, but constantly succeeding is even tougher. You can see that they pride themselves on their persistence,” Chiang says.

After honing his cooking skills for another five years, the 26-year-old Chiang finally became a chef, helping the Pourcel brothers open signature French restaurants in Tokyo, Bangkok, Singapore and Shanghai. In all these ventures Chiang was in charge of start-up work and staff training.

Around the world Chiang trained cooks much older and experienced than himself in creating gourmet French food. Meanwhile, he had become fluent in four languages – Chinese, Japanese, English and French – and more importantly, he had found that in the kitchen there is not much space for anything else but “professionalism.”

“People know whether a dish is good or not. You can’t cheat them. No matter whether you have five, ten or twenty years of experience, once the food is on the table, you’ll know immediately” whether it’s good, he says.

Persistent Like an Ox

Many would consider Chiang a lucky man because he popped onto the international cooking stage virtually by chance. The Pourcel brothers picked him to work in France at just 21 years of age, although he couldn’t speak a single word of French.

But at the time Chiang already looked back on almost a decade of cooking experience, working two eight-hour fulltime jobs at the same time.

When the Pourcel brothers, during their visit to Taiwan, told him to show up for work at 5 a.m., he would be there. If he had to work through the night until the next morning, he wouldn’t utter a word of complaint.

“I never felt that I was a genius. I am very diligent, extremely diligent,” Chiang describes himself. “I’m a Taurus. I’m very persistent. When I think I am right, I keep going like an ox.”

When opportunity presented itself, Chiang did not stop to ponder whether the job would be arduous or how much he would get out of it. When something feels right, he will do it. “Passion that cannot withstand setbacks and trials is worthless,” is one of Chiang’s favorite sayings. “Everyone wants to do something. We all have our ideals. But not everyone is able to stand the test of setbacks.”

Good food doesn’t have any borders – it only uses different languages to explain the same thing. Chiang returns to Taiwan only once every year or two, and usually stays for just one week. But Taiwan still remains his eternal home. Just as in childhood, Chiang loves to eat popular Taiwanese fare such as oyster omelettes and Taiwanese-style tempura. “These feelings won’t change. They allow me to recharge my batteries before going abroad again,” Chiang says.

Cuisine knows no national borders. Food is part of local life in every country. It is the local history, culture, attitude and means of communication. “Good food doesn’t have any borders – it only uses different languages to explain the same thing,” Chiang believes.

For his next move Chiang hopes to return to the European market and to create in France, the cradle of haute cuisine, food that wins everyone’s applause, even that of the most distinguishing French connoisseurs.

Translated by Susanne Ganz