Off camera with Bobby Chinn

Apart from random snippets on TV, and blurbs advertising his food travel show, I had never really heard of Bobby Chinn. Yeah, I knew he was supposed to be famous but sheer poor scheduling just never put an episode on the screen in front of me. My fiancé used to live in Hanoi and had always mentioned watching football games in a back room in his resto as they had friends in common. I knew he had that signature curly, overly gelled hair and was some kind of “half-breed mongrel,” like many of these hosts are. Oh, and a few years back on another press trip for Travel and Living Channel, someone had casually dropped the fact that he was quite the ladies’ man.

That was the extent of my knowledge of Bobby Chinn … until several months back, that is. Bored, jet-lagged and antsy in the airplane on some long-haul flight, I had already exhausted all the movies in the multimedia selection and had turned to TV. There, nestled between an episode of Heston’s Feast that I had already seen and some uninteresting showcase on something sporty, was World Cafe Middle East. Catchy music, a bustling street in Cairo, some old men smoking shisha, mounds of bright spices, snapshots of the pyramids and this guide with a sly smile and snazzy insights. There were intimate moments with his Egyptian mother, excited banter with locals and cooking segments where he would shift from the enthusiastic to the almost bored and impatient. I suppose this is what makes a good host — the ambiguous fine line between entertaining cheek and arrogance.

A few more shows later, I find myself on a plane to Ho Chi Minh, expecting to do a standard point-by-point interview about his new show, Restaurant Bobby Chinn. Perhaps I’d learn a thing or two for my own resto and get a nice Pho Ga out of the whole thing. What I didn’t expect was the harrowing Vespa adventure throughout crowded streets, an up-close-and-personal account with what is becoming one my favorite cities in Asia, and the unique, candid window into a very complex and interesting man.

By day Chinn is completely aloof, distant and anti-social, fiddling with his iPhone throughout lunch. By afternoon tea, warmed up by a few lead questions, the TV-host side comes out: talkative, cheerful and almost scripted. By dark, a few signature margaritas in, Chinn is disarmingly charming and sexy, striking a few notes on the guitar, looking pretty good in his new haircut. In his kitchen, he toys with his fancy gadgets like a child on Christmas day, with a goofy grin and anecdotes. As the conversation progressed, his protective veneer slowly yielded, offering us a surprising insight into a very genuine and humble man.

Extremely bold and exciting: The soft-shell crab quesadillas with mango chipotle salsa at Restaurant Bobby Chinn in Ho Chi Minh City

“What do I want to achieve with this restaurant? Sustainable, responsible food using technology to create consistent quality. I want this place do be an events venue, a place for mini-concerts, a flexible space … I see everything from the perspective of the client. I hired a guy that only takes care of the restrooms … I want to feel like I’m always the first one to have used the bathroom!” That explains the rose petals in the toilet bowl and the little triangle folds on the toilet paper.

Of Chinese and Egyptian descent, having spent time in San Francisco, New York, London and gallivanting all over the world for his show, his cuisine is — no surprise — fusion. However, it is also an uncanny reflection of his persona: at times stark and restrained (like his Scallop Carpaccio with Pomelo and Truffle Dressing) or extremely bold and exciting (like the Soft Shell Crab Quesadillas with Mango Chipotle Salsa.) Creative yet confused but not unpleasantly so. “Of course celebrity status changed how I cooked. There were a lot of Indians who watched my show and I always loved Indian food since my London days, so I integrated it.”

You’d think that with his already successful Hanoi joint and big name to bank on, that opening Restaurant Bobby Chinn HCM would be a walk in the park. Being a chef is an almost Sisyphusian career: the struggle to be relevant, an ever-changing audience, the balance between the passion and the cash cow, not to mention Murphy’s law being a constant unwelcome guest in the kitchen.  Try getting all that done with a camera in your face. You can’t rebuild a wall to tear it down again because the lighting wasn’t right, or how do you deal with a disgruntled employee with the whole world watching?

“It’s so different from World Cafe. Sometimes you really just blow your top … It’s like one minute the camera is on and everyone is working, then the director yells, ‘Cut!’ and it’s like, where the hell is everyone?” Faced with vicious local competition (after months of training he lost 50 percent of his employees right before opening to poachers), sneering disdain for his “celebrity chef” status from some classic executive chefs and the perils of bad feng shui (“I’m starting to think these guys are right!” Chinn, born in the Year of the Dragon, exclaims) — he still manages to keep his chin up. Pun intended.

Doing it like the locals do: Via Vespa!

“Only do what your weakest line cook can do consistently.” He is willing to adapt, leave his ego at the door and, like a good restaurateur, find some dishes that appeal to the untapped Vietnamese lunch crowd in the office building above him. One moment he claims, “I’m an optimist.” Ten minutes later he claims, “I’m a fatalist,” to which I countered, “You’re an optimistic fatalist? That’s quite the oxymoron.”

I didn’t quite get it till he summed up his interview with a touching account of a near-death experience in a teensy plane caught in a storm over Irian Jaya. “The engine had shut off, we had rolled to the side; when I asked the stewardess what the F was going on, she said, ‘Go back to your seat and pray!’ I had resigned myself to the thought that I was going to die … all I kept seeing was a photograph of me as a child … I felt love … I got to travel the world, look at beautiful paintings…” At this point, his eyes had softened, there was a little “aha!” moment for the journalist in me. This is the place he cooks from.

He so aptly summarizes the interview with this candid and profound statement: “Dream within the boundaries of what you live in. Roll the dice and hope.”

Construction permits, delayed groundbreaking and nitpicking the budgets are what await me in Manila. I’m thinking this is the hard part, but I know there is truth in his message on my signed copy of his cookbook: “Wait till you open.” I have comfort I knowing that in the next few months, when all goes to hell, I can turn on the TV and not feel so bad. Misery loves company and at least I don’t have a camera in my face or a crazy feng shui master to deal with when I have a nervous breakdown.

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Restaurant Bobby Chinn premieres on TLC every Monday at 10 p.m. starting Aug. 13. For more information go to www.tlcasia.com.