Top Chef contestant Shuai Wang does not think of himself as a competitive person. "I'm one of those people who thinks everyone deserves a trophy for participating," he says.
And yet, the Charleston chef did really well on the television cooking show — making it all the way to the finale.
"Prior to going on Top Chef, I felt very stuck," Wang says. He thought he'd peaked. But being in competition mode, learning from other chefs, he says, "it kind of just rejuvenated my creativity." In one episode, he cooked with ants that he'd foraged and gently toasted. They tasted like lemons, he said, "such a wonderful, zingy flavor."
When he's not off filming a reality show, Shuai Wang is usually in North Charleston, South Carolina, with his wife and business partner, Corrie Wang. The couple met working at a restaurant in New York City. They moved south 10 years ago and had a food truck before opening their first restaurant, Jackrabbit Filly, named after their zodiac signs, and then a second restaurant, King BBQ.
It opened a year and half ago in a building that was, at various times, an ad agency, a church and a lunch counter, says Shuai. It's a beautiful space, with lots of personal touches. A pair of lions standing guard out front and the tile ceiling were custom made and shipped from Beijing, where Shuai was born. Framed portraits of the couple's dogs line the hallway. Red Chinese tassels hang from the ceiling and the walls are painted jade green — for good fortune.
The Wangs call their menu "Chinatown BBQ made with southern smoke." It, too, is full of personal touches. Krab rangoon with buttermilk hush puppies and hot honey. Chinese BBQ egg rolls with habanero duck sauce. "I cook from nostalgia," Chef Wang says.
The first dish Shuai cooks for NPR rings that bell — crispy, smoked duck on top of noodles with bok choy.
"That's just my fondest memory of growing up in New York," he says, "my parents taking me to Flushing on the weekends, or late nights after work, going down to Chinatown."
Shuai Wang remembers that when he was a young boy in Beijing, Communist China was still handing out food rations. So his grandma, who helped raise him, had to stretch her portion of rice and allotment of lard to feed the family.
He likens it to how enslaved families in the South improvised using the scraps they were left with to make a meal.
"That's why I feel so connected with Southern food, right?" he says. "That's where collard greens came from. The field peas, the butter beans."
Wang immigrated to the United States when he was nine, where his mom took over the cooking. He calls her the "OG Top Chef." But he didn't find his own love of cooking until high school. "I had to take a culinary class in my last two years to make up credits for all the classes that I 'accidentally missed,'" he laughs.
The next plate he makes — chili tofu, a take on mapo tofu — is an homage to Shuai and Corrie's relationship. "That's the first dish that Corrie and I shared on our first date," Shuai explains. "I immediately scooped it up and put it in my mouth, not thinking that it would be a million degrees. And I spat it right out onto my plate, and everywhere."
Corrie didn't leave, and that's how they knew it was meant to be. "We're both like, crying… everything's so spicy and hot," adds Corrie. "It was a great time."
This version of chili tofu is done in a fancy, Hamburger Helper, Asian-Italian style, with soft tofu, a sweet, spicy, tangy chili sauce and local ground pork on a bed of pasta, topped with mozzarella cheese. Tofu and mozzarella sound a little funky? Somehow, it really works.
"I get crazy ideas," Shuai Wang says. "I have a million and one crazy ideas. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, you know?"
Corrie Wang says she's seen a natural progression as they've developed the restaurants where Shuai is "just creating legit Chinese food" rather than making gimmicky dishes.
"I just realized I really just want to embrace myself and my culture and cook Chinese food," he says.
After his Top Chef stint, Shuai is taking all his crazy ideas, his heritage and a renewed spirit of adventure and creativity into the future. "I realized oh, I didn't peak," he says. "Chinese food has 500 years of history. I've explored very little of it."
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