The Poons are back to bring Edible Love to London

There has been much excitement about a Chinese pop-up, Poon’s. It opened in Clerkenwell, London on 17 February 2018 and is due to run for 3 months or so. This is no ordinary pop-up. Amy Poon, the founder, is the daughter of William Poon, one of the first Chinese chefs to have won a Michelin star in the UK. Quite a heritage – she comes from many generations of chefs on both sides of her family.

William aka Bill Poon is said to have put Cantonese food firmly on the map in London. A wise-looking man in his seventies, often seen wearing his cap, retired in 2006. He has come out of retirement with fire under his belt, acting as a consultant to the Poon’s pop up. He “really enjoyed” cooking a 13-course Heritage Dinner at Poon’s recently. What a dinner it was.

Originally from China, where his father was a famous chef. His family moved to Macau because of floods in China, seriously depressing fish stock. Bill Poon started cooking after school aged 12 in his father’s restaurant kitchens in Macau and then in Hong Kong. There he learned all different techniques such as barbequing, stewing and wind-drying meats.

Bill’s mother was famous for her accurate knife skills. She started cooking aged 8 in her father’s kitchen. Her tiny frame would stand on a stool, with a massive Chinese cleaver in her hand and chop up a whole goose beautifully in minutes. Her great grandfather, a Hong Kong chef, invented a way of using cloths to soak up soup, drying the cloths and then remaking the soup by rehydrating them to release flavours from the soup wherever he travelled.

When Bill was 16, he learned the craft of making dim sum from his father’s dim sum chef hired from China. Knowing the importance of being able to learn from others outside his restaurant, his father advised him to leave the family restaurant kitchen and “learn from other people and do as you are told by others”. Bill left and very quickly picked up patisserie. He honed his patisserie skills at a hotel in Hong Kong (which then became known as a Hyatt hotel). Unusual in his days, he had worked in all departments (sweet and savoury) in the kitchen.

In 1967, Bill came to England, having followed Amy’s mother, who went there to study nursing. In 1968, he opened his own factory, making the now famous wind-dried meats from his father’s recipe. Then, in 1973, he opened his first restaurant in Lisle Street, Chinatown. People would wait in a pub next door for a table at his restaurant. He decided to open his second restaurant, the first Chinese restaurant to be sited outside Chinatown, this time in Kingly Street, Covent Garden. A perfect location, right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of Covent Garden, which is now occupied by Burberry.

At his Covent Garden restaurant, he was the first in the restaurant industry to have a kitchen housed in a glass box right in the middle of the restaurant. This was long before it became trendy to have a kitchen visible to the customers. His friends loved Chinese food but said that they often didn’t dare, because Chinese restaurant kitchens had a reputation of being dirty. For a long time, he had wanted to demystify this misconception. He therefore designed the kitchen to be glazed surrounded by tables, like a “zoo”. The openness and theatre of the kitchen brought him many more friends (and wine from customers).

He was also the first to introduce the concept of set menus in Chinese restaurants, as he realised that Chinese menus were too huge and overwhelming for many. Another pioneering concept was his claypot rice – rice, topped with his renowned wind dried meat, cooked in the juice and flavours of the wind dried meat and presented in a claypot.

Formal recognition came in 1980 when his Covent Garden restaurant was awarded a Michelin star. He was so busy working that he hadn’t noticed the envelope from Michelin in the post. He only learned of the news from the manager from a restaurant down the road who read about it in the papers and dashed over to congratulate him.

His restaurant empire expanded including one in Switzerland, totalling 4 at one stage. He gave his first restaurant to his older brother to run, having applied for his brother to migrate to the UK. Success also enabled him to put his younger brother through college. “Being a traditional Chinese man, family is important to me”, Bill said. He was also a judge on the Chinese Master Chef competition.

Bill retired in 2006, having sold all his restaurants. His wind dried meat is still available in many UK supermarkets. However, he became ill after retirement, missing the business, the “atmosphere” of his restaurants and his customers. He has remained friends with many of the chefs that he trained, having them over for supper every week. In fact, one comes over a few times a week “to check if I am still alive”, he chuckled.

Despite having sworn that she wouldn’t open a Chinese restaurant, Amy Poon is passionate to continue the Poon legacy. Her vision is to bring well-cooked food in “homecooking style” to London, like “mothers cooking for their kids”, food that is “healthy and simple eg steamed, flavoursome and homely, giving a warm feeling with edible love”. Her food “comes from the heart” and her restaurant does not add any MSG. According to Bill, “there is no need to add MSG, as long as the ingredients are of high quality and cooked properly, using the right techniques.”

From my chat with Bill, he is obviously a fountain of knowledge about Chinese (notably Cantonese) cuisine. He knows over 200 ways of cooking duck and has an in-depth understanding of the functions of ingredients. His wish is to help his daughter flourish in her restaurant in her desire to continue the Poon legacy and “pass on my knowledge” and train even more chefs, whether Chinese or non-Chinese. He firmly believes in training the next generation of chefs, as “the more people who get into this career, the more the industry will thrive”.

It was a moving sight to see how the father and daughter interacted, with Bill admiring the steely determination in Amy and Amy admiring the genius in Bill with 65 years of cooking experience, likening him to Van Gogh. What mutual respect. What a team.

Poon's Pop up at 131 - 133 Central Street, Clerkenwell, London EC1V 8AP (At: Thé Alchemist) - currently till 6 May 2018

My blog appears in the November/December 2018 issue of FOCUS, a magazine for expats in the UK. To read it, simply click on the link below:

https://www.focus-info.org/includes/documents/2018/f/foc70_novdec_the_poons_article.pdf