Wednesday, May 7, 7:00 p.m.
Members $125, guests $150

A first-generation Chinese-American, Tsai grew up cooking at his mother’s side, first in their home, and later at the restaurant she opened in Dayton, Ohio. But Tsai did a thing or two before becoming a professional chef himself: he went to Yale, earned a degree in mechanical engineering, met his future wife, ranked as the university’s number one squash player, and spent a summer in France. If he’d stopped there, Boston would have missed out on one of its greatest chefs.

It was during that fateful summer in France that Tsai took some courses at Le Cordon Bleu and worked at a bakery. He returned to New Haven to graduate, then, in less time than it takes to say “steak-frites,” he’d packed up and moved back to Paris. This time, he found work at Fauchon and at the stylish Natacha bistro. Later, he went even farther afield, training with a sushi master in Osaka, Japan. When Tsai finally returned to the United States, he sought formal training in the non-culinary side of the industry. He got a master’s degree in hotel administration at Cornell University. After graduation, he joined Ken Hom’s team at Silks in San Francisco, a restaurant celebrated for its East-West cuisine. Tsai left Silks to become the executive chef of the Ginger Club in Palo Alto. Then he headed south to Santa Fe and took charge the kitchen of Santacafe, which quickly became Zagat’s top-rated restaurant in the city.

In 1998, Tsai and his wife Polly moved back east, to open Blue Ginger in a suburb of Boston. A few months after it opened, Boston magazine included the restaurant in its Best of Boston issue, and stated that Tsai’s food was “done with intelligence, restraint, and style.” The Boston Globe gave Blue Ginger three stars, and John Mariani named Tsai Esquire’s chef of the year. “Ming Tsai puts to rest the notion that cross-cultural cooking is merely faddish or contrived,” Mariani wrote. “His is food that lingers long in the memory and promises to become an indelible part of American gastronomy.”

That same year, Tsai’s TV show, East Meets West, debuted on the Food Network. “The foremost interpreter of East-West cuisine in America today,” as Mariani called Tsai, has recently beefed up his résumé even more—he’s added a second TV show, a cookbook, and a 2002 American Express Best Chef: Northeast Award. Tsai will be joined at the Beard House by sous-chefs Jonathan Taylor, Terrence Maul, Isaac Bancaco, and pastry chef Marina Brancely.