Tommy Tang Displays Personality and Professionalism

Posted on August 25, 2008 by Gary McCarty

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Toomy Tang, left, invites an audience member to help him cook

Finally, a cooking demonstration that actually was informative!

The past two live cooking events I attended both demonstrated next to no cooking expertise. David Livingston, with his "family" recipes, certainly had a small (I do mean small) following of devotees, while Guy Fieri is, needless to say, a national fan favorite. Both, however, relied on personality rather than cooking skill to inform their demonstrations. I killed some time at both demos, but learned nothing.

Now, talk about incongruity and reversal of expectations. Today I attended a demo by Tommy Tang, the Thai chef from public TV’s Let’s Get Cooking, whom I once labeled a buffoon, and it turned out that Mr. Tang was both professional and personable and presented a greatly informative demonstration. I even learned how Thai Jasmine rice is cultivated and why it’s special. (Ask for Thai Hom Mali Rice–Jasmine rice comes only from Thailand.)

His food demo was of deep-fried Thai sticky rice balls, for which he was smart enough to invite the audience up to help him prepare and cook (they are time consuming to assemble). His demo was one of the last events at this year’s Western Foodservice & Hospital Expo in Los Angeles.

So, my imaginary toque is off to Tommy Tang. Let’s have more cooking demos like his.

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