Diners Club honors Chinese chef's imperial tradition

"Stinky No 9" would be proud.

That was the moniker given to Ivan Li's father, a university professor, during the "cultural revolution" (1966-76), when intellectuals were routinely humiliated.

"Our family lost everything at that time except one thing, our love of good food," says Li, who has just won Diners Club's 2014 lifetime achievement award. He will travel this weekend to the award ceremony in Singapore, where Diners Club will also honor this year's list of 50 best restaurants in Asia.

Chef Li is the inheritor of Family Li Imperial Cuisine, a restaurant group that has made eating like an emperor possible for the rest of us.

That wasn't easy, despite the copious records and recipes they could retrieve from sources including the Forbidden City. The emperor was often served 100 dishes at a time - and not the same dishes he had the day before, says Li, who lacks the massive staff of kitchen help and serving eunuchs on hand at the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) palace.

The Qing were Manchurians, and many of the game delicacies most loved by those rulers are not available or endangered, such as bear's paw - which Li himself remembers enjoying as a boy. Pigs in imperial days were butchered when they reached 25 kilograms, making them younger and more tender than most pork on offer today.

"Back then, it took six months for a pig to reach that weight, today modern farmers can achieve that in perhaps one month," he says. "But the texture and the flavor will be quite different."

Deer tail, another favorite of the court, does appear on the menu, though today's version is farm-raised and not wild-caught. Like many of Li's signature dishes, this was a favorite of the Dowager Empress Cixi (1835-1908). ("They say it's an aphrodisiac, you know," wickedly interjects Li's wife and business manager, Carrie Kwan.) But there are also a few dishes, primarily seafood, that never passed the Qing rulers' lips.

"Lobster is so delicious I just couldn't pass it up," Li says with a grin. "But we cook it in a very traditional way, very slowly so it's wonderfully tender, and in a secret sauce that is also very traditional."

Li can talk about technique all day, and believes it's the key to his culinary tradition. He savors using "a few different cooking methods just to cook one dish".

His eight-treasure duck, for example, requires at least seven hours to prepare: "First it's boiled, then steamed, then roasted and lastly braised with all of the other ingredients." He similarly admires traditional Peking duck, which also demands time and multiple techniques.

Such extensive preparations are one reason that Li only serves a set menu, allowing both preparation time and waste control. But that, he says, is part of the story: The imperial family had a set meal, too - on a much larger scale. Li's more intimate presentation is chosen from about 4,000 known main dishes - with substitutes for now-unavailable ingredients - that are rotated so regular diners and his chefs get plenty of variety.

Li is currently training chefs in Beijing who will cook at new satellite restaurants set to open this year in Taipei and Paris, joining other 80-seat dining rooms in Beijing, Shanghai, Tokyo and Melbourne.

Taking his cuisine out of Asia can be a challenge, he says, noting that Australian diners, for example, didn't embrace entrees such as sea cucumber.

But Paris may be different, he says, because the cuisine culture is very open.

"As long as the food is excellent and lovingly prepared," he says. "And that's what we do."

IF YOU GO

Family Li Imperial Cuisine

L301 Europlaza, 99 Yuxiang Lu (Road), Shunyi district, Beijing

010-8046-1748