Although chef Nick Liu has a Chinese background (via South Africa and India), his first visit to China is in 2019, a trip to Beijing for a project with the University of Toronto. Liu, the man behind Toronto’s much-loved DaiLo and Little DaiLo at Assembly Chef’s Hall, will be there cooking classic recipes, dating back hundreds of years, researching how the original dishes were made and how they were changed over time and when they travelled to other parts of the world. The journey will contribute to our knowledge about culinary history—how it came to be that typical North American Chinese food doesn’t at all resemble the food eaten in China—but also to Liu’s own menu planning. “DaiLo is really all my life experiences, my travels, my family background all put together and some rendition of it makes it onto the menu,” he says. A competitor on last fall’s Iron Chef Canada, Liu always seems to be up for an adventure. During his time at Scaramouche he took a one-year sabbatical to Tuscany, and has travelled and worked through England and regularly heads to Mexico for culinary events
We connected with the busy chef in Toronto. Here, he shares his memorable moments with us via Instagram.
On Gratitude and A Moment Worth Celebrating
DaiLoTO turned SIX and I’m really grateful that I can celebrate the six year anniversary of my restaurant, in my restaurant today, doing what I love, WITH the people that I love, FOR the people that I love. Yes, that’s YOU! All of you.
I don’t have to say “this is a new world we live in today” because that’s a given. But I will say that EVEN in this new world that we are now getting used to, where the very industry in which I, and many others like me LOVE doing for you is struggling, I’m grateful that today I can celebrate the way that I am.
To be celebrating an anniversary during these times is so humbling and I have so much gratitude for every one of you that has supported us, from the very first day we opened, from the very first cardboard tray from my pop-ups, from even before the thought of the first dumpling was conceived.
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Iron Chef Canada
I grew up watching the original Japanese Iron Chef and as a young chef it dictated where my career would go. When you become a cook, you can be a line cook or go the hotel route. Because of Iron Chef, I wanted to go into fine dining, where I could experiment. It was really quite an honour to be asked to be on the show.
Growing own vegetables for the restaurant
I have about 22 different varieties of tomatoes I grow up in Markham at my parents’ place. I’ve been growing them now for seven years and each year we save the seeds and each year they get better and better. I love to grow my own foods, forage and get dirty in the dirt. Knowing where it comes from before it goes on the plate means a lot to me.
#Selfcare
When you’re a chef you’re around a lot of rich delicious food and booze. It’s something we have to be mindful of, and even people we really look up to, like Anthony Bourdain, go through things like alcoholism and depression. So I’ve been trying to live a healthier lifestyle. At the beginning of the year, I had been so busy and eating out a lot. I was feeling fatigued and gained a lot of weight. Even just walking upstairs I was out of breath. These days I’m feeling great. My stomach has flattened out a bit, and my energy level is up. No sugars, no booze, no fermentations, no gluten, no dairy. Instead of adding sugar, I’ll buy ripe pears and make a puree to add sweetness to the sauces I’m making.
TEDx Talk
Doing a TEDx Talk was one of the most challenging things I’ve ever done. I said in my speech that I wasn’t ever good or focused in school growing up. I had a bit of dyslexia, which I didn’t know at the time. Growing up, I was labelled one of the dumb kids and that stuck with me for a long time. To be able to write my thoughts on paper and talk about my thoughts and ideas was a massive hurdle for me, but it gave me a massive sense of achievement. It made me realize that I’m a lot more capable than I thought I was.
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Wontons: a family recipe
I did a podcast that’s about family and food. I’ve always been around great food because both my parents are great cooks, so the podcast we did was about the wontons that my grandparents made, that my parents still make. I remember a time when I was travelling a lot, learning French food under some of the best in the world. After my travels when I came back, all I really wanted was to go home and eat some of my grandmother’s dumplings. When I had these dumplings again it was like eating them for the first time because my palate had been enhanced by my experiences.
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A Restaurateur and Entrepreneur
To have one restaurant was a dream already and to start working on a second restaurant, Little DaiLo at Assembly Chef’s Hall, was one of those moments where I really felt like a restauranteur, not just a chef. I wanted to create something that was a lunch-focused menu. Every place I’ve worked has been focused on dinner and fine dining, but I enjoy challenging myself.
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My Signature Dish
Jim Giggie is a trout supplier I’ve been using forever. This is one of my favourite renditions of this dish and it’s one of my signature dishes and probably the biggest seller at the restaurant. When we get it in the fall, it has all the eggs in it, we take and brine them so we have trout caviar we can use. It’s so fresh, we can’t even butcher it the day they bring it in, it has rigamortis
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The Dish: Singapore Chili Crab
This is one of the favourite dishes I had when I was in Singapore, eating at the hawker markets. It’s just gorgeous, it’s a beautiful dish. Outside crab season, customers will pre-order it. When you’re picking out crab, you definitely want to feel the shells, especially the back legs. They should be very firm and hard. If not, they might have been sitting in the tank for too long.
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The Inspiration behind my food
This was Edible Other, a cool event I did with a bunch of other chefs in Chicago and a few other parts of the States. We take some traditional dishes we feel very close to, dishes that are part of our heritage, that come from a deep feeling, history and affection. Then here’s an open discussion, where they invite professors and food industry professionals to talk about them. One thing that came up was appropriation and how chefs need to be mindful about using heritage dishes for their own profitability. Every dish I create has to have some type of meaning.
