Hong
Kong's Queen of Cakes
 
Maria
Lee: Hong Kong's daytime diva of good taste
With a regal sweep of her arm, Hong Kong's celebrity of
gastronomy, Maria Lee Tseng Chiu-kwan, ushers her 14 North American lunch
guests into her surprisingly understated dining room.
These are modest digs for someone who, at her pinnacle,
ruled over an empire of cake shops that stretched across the Pacific from
Taipei to San Francisco.
Called The Queen of Cakes, 73-year-old Maria Lee is so
well known and beloved in Hong Kong that taxi drivers transport her for
free, auto mechanics have refused to charge her and hundreds of Hong Kong
residents seek her advice not only on cooking, but on everything from
romance and child-rearing to home decoration and fashion.
When the Asian economy went bust, Ms. Lee's chain of
cake shops collapsed. Pausing for only a heartbeat, the former
cooking-show host, Chinese opera singer and entrepreneur mastered the
computer and transformed herself into a dot-com doyenne. Her Web site,
which she maintains herself, offers recipes, celebrity interviews and,
most wonderfully for food lovers visiting Hong Kong, an opportunity to
join her for a home-cooked meal at her apartment in the posh Jardine's
Lookout section of Hong Kong.
Her e-invitation has become such a hit that more than
4,000 people, including politicians, movie stars and diplomats, have taken
her up on it in less than a year. The Queen of Cakes is a tall woman, with
black hair, red lipstick and meticulously drawn eyebrows so animated they
command the attention of the guests she is seating at her big round dining
room table. She seems so pleased to have guests, she almost hops with
excitement. "I hope you enjoy my food today. You just call me
Maria."
Doctor Lee -- she has received the honourary title
several times over, fills a room with swift, large movements reminiscent
of another cooking legend, Julia Child. Ms. Lee giggles at such
comparisons with the divas of North American daytime television such as
Child, Oprah Winfrey or Martha Stewart.
"Ree-eally?" she stretches the word out just
long enough to see she is considering the comparison and, after three
seconds of thinking about it, agrees.
Her dining room is crammed with photos of herself with
New York governor Mario Cuomo, Asian gazillionaire Li Ka-shing, the
Duchess of Kent, the Reagans and 20 or so other "big shots" as
she calls them.
At this lunch, guests, all older, well-heeled Americans,
are treated to bits of yam, pork rib marinated with curry in a bamboo
basket, exotic soup of white fungus and chicken, crispy duck with taro.
Each course comes in a colourful dish in the shape of the animal being
eaten.
Ms. Lee works the room like a veteran Las Vegas
entertainer. "I hope you will like my lunch. If you don't, let me
know." Who wouldn't like one of these six-course lunches or 12-course
dinners, especially when Ms. Lee is there, hovering and chirping over
absolute strangers as if they are her best friends. She admits she is
happiest with a houseful of people, but never expected her little
late-life hobby to turn into one of the trendiest things to do in Hong
Kong.
Although this very public persona claims she never got
into this for the money, she realizes her runaway success could be
profitable. So now, in addition to the gourmet Chinese banquets and
MSG-free lunches, she is offering culinary tours to her country house in
Guandong in China. There she will ply guests with gourmet meals, cooking
classes and the once-in-a-lifetime chance to sit on her patio overlooking
the lake and sing karaoke until the sun comes up. -
by Judith Ritter National
Post 20 April 2002
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