Craftsmanship at the heart of top female chef’s award-winning dim sum – 365daysofdining.com
By Tara Lee
Chef and owner of Golden Paramount Seafood Restaurant May Chau
appears fairly shy and unassuming for a dim sum chef superstar, but make
no mistake — she’s a wizard at making dumplings. Just last year Chau
won Silver for Best Dim Sum in the Vancouver Magazine’s 2014 Restaurant Awards.
Her intensive training began at age 12 when she started apprenticing
at a top dim sum restaurant in Hong Kong. Since then, she’s been honing
her skills, eventually opening Golden Paramount in Richmond in 2007
(located at 8071 Park Road).
Chau eschews showy fusion cooking and instead concentrates on
transforming traditional dishes into revelatory eating experiences. “My
dim sum is focused more on delicacy, craftsmanship, and ingredients,”
she explains during a chat at the restaurant.
A prime illustration of her dim sum philosophy is her steamed dumpling
with pork and crab meat, which was a Critic’s Choice Signature Dish for
the 2013 Chinese Restaurant Awards. They really are a work of art, with
the dumpling’s wheat starch wrappers so thin that they are almost
transparent. The interior of minced Chinese mushrooms, bamboo shoots,
pork, crab meat, shrimp and cilantro has a fine texture from meticulous
knife work.
