Charleston chef Shuai Wang competes on ‘Top Chef' in Canada
NORTH CHARLESTON, S.C. (WCBD) – The owner of two local restaurants is competing against other chefs around the country on season 22 of 'Top Chef: Destination Canada.' The cooking pro is prepared to bring the heat in the reality competition television series.
'My favorite dish. That's a hard one. There's so many … honestly one of my favorite, favorite things in the whole entire world to eat, and I can eat endless amount of this, is just my mom's cooking, shared Chef Shuai Wang.
North Charleston chef takes culinary talent to national stage by appearing on Bravo's 'Top Chef'
He went on to explain, 'She does this stuffed scallion pancake. It has garlic chives and ground pork in there. I can just eat that 'til I'm sick, basically.'
Chef Wang was born in Beijing, China and immigrated to the United States to Queens, New York. He later moved to Charleston, thinking he would be there for a short time to help a friend. He ended up falling in love with the Holy City's charm.
'I love North Charleston particularly. It feels very much my own vibe. It's all the working class and people like my age who are just trying to, you know, make a living and start a family,' said Chef Wang, who is the owner of Jackrabbit Filly and King BBQ.
'At Jackrabbit Filly, we call it Chinese American. It's not so much the American Chinese food that most people are used to, which is your typical takeout right, your General Tso's chicken, your beef and broccoli,' he said.
Instead, the menu is inspired by recipes made with love by his mother and grandmother.
'It's like old-school Beijing-style food, which you don't typically see in the States, but then we also utilize as much local ingredients as possible. In fact, we're part of the fresh menu program, so more than 25% of our menu is local and I don't think you see that a lot with Chinese food either and it's not just Chinese, it's Chinese food inspired, but it's food that's kind of inspired me throughout my whole entire career,' said Chef Wang.
A melting pot of flavors, his other restaurant, King BBQ, is inspired by Chinatown-style BBQ married with a southern technique.
'More Carolina-style barbeque than anything else. You know, a lot of tons of great barbeque here in Charleston,' he said.
Not competitive in nature, Chef Wang saw 'Top Chef' as an opportunity to showcase his skills and promote his restaurants even though he was hesitant to apply for the show.
Chef Wang shared, 'I was dreading it before going on because, again, I'm not competitive I thought everyone's going to be butting heads and be mean to each other and that's not just my vibe you know, but as soon as we started and after the first episode, it was just like everyone's so nice. We just bonded immediately.'
Before going on 'Top Chef,' Chef Wang didn't watch the show until he was chosen to be a contestant.
He explained, 'I don't watch cooking competitions shows typically just because, you know, I worked cart service every day and the last thing I want to do is kind of give myself more anxiety by watching other chef's struggle.'
Before competing on the show this season, Chef Wang not only tested recipes he hadn't made in awhile, he also completed 30 minute challenges at home with his wife.
'Just kind of timing myself, we spent a lot of time at Whole Foods trying to memorize the aisles which was very silly because you know, didn't realize, didn't even think about Canadian Whole Foods might be different than the United States Whole foods,' said Chef Wang.
Grateful for the opportunity, as Chef Wang competes, he cooks each dish with passion.
He went on to say, 'For me, to be a chef is less about the food and is more about taking care of people. I love having to take care of someone, and the best way to do that, for me, is through food. Something about food just brings everyone together and watching people eat your food and having that reaction, that's like, you know, like happiness, biggest reason why I wanted to be a chef.'
The winner of 'Top Chef' will take home the grand prize of $250,000. You can support Chef Wang by watching him on Bravo every Thursday at 9 p.m. or streaming it the next day on Peacock.
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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National Geographic
3 hours ago
- National Geographic
In the Sichuan capital, renewed heritage appreciation is helping ancient teahouses go viral
This article was produced by National Geographic Traveller (UK). It's barely 9am when I slide into a bamboo armchair at Heming Tea House in Chengdu's sprawling People's Park. This century-old stalwart is one of the oldest teahouses in the megacity that I called home until I was nine. While I was growing up here, in one of China's oldest tea-growing areas, many weekends were spent in an open-air teahouse like this one. While adults played games of mahjong and the kids ran riot, roving hawkers carrying heavy baskets balanced on bamboo shoulder poles would come round selling snacks. The most famous of these is dan dan mian (shoulder pole noodles), where a nest of cold noodles is placed on a hot and tongue-numbing mala chilli oil base, topped with spring onion and minced meat, then mixed and greedily devoured. But as I sip my grassy mao feng green tea, I'm struck by how unusually busy it is. Hordes of tourists with phones in video mode stream past the chairs crammed under teak pavilions and beige parasols. Most seats already filled by pensioners putting the world to rights or families cracking into toasted sunflower seeds. Heming Tea House has lately gained wang hong ('internet fame') with Chinese travellers — the local expression for going viral. Photograph by Getty Images, Plej92 A group of photography students is playing cards next to me, their backs turned on a pile of cameras carelessly stacked on a spare chair. I lean over and ask why there are so many people here on a weekday. One of the students looks up and tells me Heming has lately gained wang hong ('internet fame') with Chinese travellers — the local expression for going viral. Later, I head to Lao Chuzi Sichuan Restaurant for a family gathering. The low-key restaurant and teahouse on the top floor of a four-storey office block isn't particularly well known, but my uncle picked it because it's a favourite in his neighbourhood, and it serves a stellar line-up of Sichuan dishes, including garlic-infused fish, fragrant aubergine and thin slices of poached pork served with a drizzle of sesame-laced chilli sauce. I bring up the wang hong phenomenon. 'There are wang hong places everywhere now and business is booming,' my uncle tells me, noting a similarly popular place down the road: 11th Street. Later, we stroll over to take a look. Amid the low-rise residential blocks is a row of a dozen or so two-storey buildings, their exposed wooden beams and pitched roofs incongruous with the more modern surroundings. Each houses a hole-in-the-wall joint; their names — like Xiangxiang Mian ('alley noodles') or Du Youyou Boboji ('Du Youyou's spicy skewers') — advertise their specialities. Wooden tables and bamboo chairs spill onto the street in front, where there are as many people taking photos as there are noisily eating. 'These all used to be teahouses,' says my uncle, who's lived in the neighbourhood for over 30 years and watched the buildings' metamorphosis into buzzy restaurants. Before that, this ramshackle collective was made up of homes built during the tumultuous period after the Qing dynasty ended in 1912 and before the People's Republic of China was established in 1949. Since the 1990s, billions of pounds of investment have poured into Chengdu from the central government and private developers, triggering a building boom that's given large swathes of the city a complete facelift. These buildings have somehow escaped the demolitions that razed their neighbours, and ironically their rundown appearance may now become their saving grace as people seek to hold on to the last vestiges of an old Chengdu. Head chef, Steven Tan, stands proudly at Mi Xun Teahouse at The Temple House hotel. Before it was a Michelin-starred vegetarian restaurant, Mi Xun started with tea and snacks until more and more people requested the food. Heming Tea House is a century-old stalwart, and one of the oldest teahouses in the megacity of Chengdu. Photograph by Alamy, Lejeanvre Philippe In recent years, there's been a concerted effort to protect and redevelop old buildings with heritage value — the type that don't hold historical significance, like temples and monuments, but still have a place in the city's history. One of the more sensitively done projects is the downtown Taikoo Li shopping and entertainment complex, where a handful of 19th-century homes surrounding Daci Temple were restored and given a new lease of life a decade ago. Mi Xun Teahouse, the Michelin-starred vegetarian restaurant at The Temple House hotel, occupies one of these. The grey brick walls of this single-storey building — set aside from the modern tower that makes up the main hotel — hide a tranquil courtyard that transforms into a wood-panelled al fresco dining spot in fine weather, a single tree providing dappled shade. It's here that I meet executive chef Tony Xu, who tells me that in the beginning Mi Xun was just supposed to be a teahouse. 'Because Chengdu is very big on tea, we started with tea and some snacks,' he says, explaining that teahouses almost always serve some kind of food. 'But more and more people were requesting our food, so we added more dishes to the menu. And now people mainly come for the food.' Tony takes inspiration from Buddhist culinary traditions in a nod to the temple next door, and so the menu is vegetarian with a very subtle use of spices and no garlic or onion. He is also an innovator, preparing dishes such as a vegan dan dan mian, made with an egg-free noodle of his own creation, containing wheat and cake flour for extra bite and spinach juice for colour; and mapo tofu, which is flavoured with mushrooms instead of the traditional pork mince. The result is a modern take on classic Sichuan flavours, with striking visual appeal. Executive chef at Mi Xun Teahouse, Tony Xu takes inspiration from Buddhist culinary traditions in a nod to the temple next door, so the menu is vegetarian with a very subtle use of spices. He is also an innovator, preparing dishes such as mapo tofu, which is flavoured with mushrooms instead of the traditional pork mince. The result is a modern take on classic Sichuan flavours, with striking visual appeal. 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Each houses a hole-in-the-wall joint; their names — like Xiangxiang Mian ('alley noodles') or Du Youyou Boboji ('Du Youyou's spicy skewers') — advertise their specialities. Wooden tables and bamboo chairs spill onto 11th Street in front, where there are as many people taking photos as there are noisily eating. It's only when we sit down at a restaurant serving jiang hu cuisine — a rough-and-ready style of cooking that has its origins in the street markets of Sichuan, a province that's big on flavour intensity — that Yin and I finally get some time to chat. As we liberate chunks of dry-fried chicken from underneath piles of chillies, and fish out tender slivers of beef from a spicy broth, Yin tells me she settled in Chengdu over a decade ago for two very simple reasons: the food and the lifestyle. Taking a sip of buckwheat tea, she adds: 'Chengdu is a laid-back city, and the best way to experience this is in a teahouse.' Audley has a 15-day tour of China, which includes two nights in Chengdu, as well as time in Beijing, Xi'an, Guilin, Yangshuo and Shanghai. From £5,495 per person, including flights, transfers, B&B accommodation and excursions, such as the Lost Plate food tour. This story was created with the support of Audley. Published in the July/August 2025 issue of National Geographic Traveller (UK). To subscribe to National Geographic Traveller (UK) magazine click here. (Available in select countries only).
Yahoo
8 hours ago
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'King of Drag's Dr. Wang Newton says the kings' moment is now: 'we're no longer chasing approval'
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Yahoo
13 hours ago
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A teary Top Chef finds our final four in Milan
[Editor's note: The A.V. Club will be back to recap next week's season finale.] Top Chef has always had a big ol' heart beating beneath those panic-inducing Quickfires and high-stakes Elimination Challenges. But Bravo's culinary reality competition has seemingly cranked up the burners on its own emotionality in recent seasons, maybe a byproduct of the addition of Kristen Kish (a show host who acutely knows the passion, pressure, and privilege of being a Top Chef champion), or the producers simply savvily clocking that we're all desperate for compassion and community in this garbage-fire of a society. Hell, maybe it's just the Canada of it all. But in a season that's served not only great cooking and kitchen drama but also bone-deep loss, heartfelt support, and true camaraderie between the competitors, Top Chef has become less about stewing rivalries and more comfort-food viewing—i.e. just the kind of dish we need these days. As competitor Tristan Epps noted in this week's episode: 'We looked at past seasons, and everyone is always at each other's throat—we're nothing but hugs and tears.' And there were bittersweet tears and cozy feelings aplenty in the penultimate episode of Top Chef season 22, which saw our four semi-finalists—Epps, Bailey Sullivan, César Murillo, and Shuai Wang—departing the warm, welcoming arms of Canada for the grand-finale backdrop of Milan, Italy. The giddiness of the scenery change was infectious: It was Shuai's first time going to Italy ('I'd move to Europe just for the butter') and César's first time hitting the European continent full-stop. That excitement continued, for us viewers at least, when Kish announced that the final QuickFire challenge of the season would focus on that famously finicky Italian specialty: risotto. We're in Milan, where rice is king, so the inclusion of the notoriously difficult dish was fair, but that doesn't mean our cheftestants were happy to see it. ('Not risotto! I thought I could manifest it out of this competition,' Tristen lamented.) They got a little leg up with a staggered cooking schedule, so no one chef's dish turned gloopy while it waited to meet Tom Colicchio's taste buds. And the largest QuickFire prize yet ($15,000) certainly didn't hurt. With thirty-five minutes on the clock, the competitors turned out two traditional-ish bowls of rice (Tristen's West African-inspired risotto with dressed heirloom tomatoes and charred butter greens, and Bailey's red wine-stained version with Parmigiano, pear and hazelnut gremolata) and two, uh, not. Both César and Shuai ran the risk of poking the bear (a.k.a. Tom) by subbing out rice grains entirely in favor of root vegetables: The former served celery-root risotto with chicken jus and white truffle, and the latter, squash risotto with chanterelles and saffron. 'The word riso means rice!' Colicchio griped during judging, and it goes without saying that neither non-rice bowl won. Instead, it was Tristen's jollof-inspired interpretation that added $15,000 to his season's winnings. ('I made Black people risotto and won!') And now for the biggie: the Elimination Challenge that would secure their spot in the final three. For the occasion, producers tapped into the buzz around the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics and Paralympics by having four medal-winning American athletes—bobsledder Elana Meyers Taylor, snowboarder Red Gerard, ice-sled hockey player Declan Farmer, and multi-sport Paralympic star Oksana Masters—pair up with the chefs to help them grocery shop. No, it didn't totally make sense, but I did appreciate the sporty supermarket hijinks, from Masters good-naturedly trying to sabotage César's rivals by asking them about their pets to Shuai and Declan struggling to find puffed pastry with their Duolingo-level Italian. The chefs would be using those wares in a three-part head-to-head tournament, each round focused on a different ingredient from Milan or Cortina: the first on polenta, the second on beetroot, and the third on Gorgonzola cheese. After two hours of prep and an additional 30 minutes of cook time in an outdoor courtyard, the Fab Four would serve their penultimate plates to a panel including the Team USA athletes, Top Chef Middle East winner Ali Ghzawi, and two-star Michelin chef Andrea Aprea. If you win the polenta round, good news: You're automatically in the final three. A second finalist will then be added after the beetroot smackdown, with the two last players desperately battling it out over stinky Gorgonzola. Bailey, out for redemption, planned to double down on polenta for both rounds one and three, the latter of which would also include a redo of that bad brûléed Gorgonzola idea from week 11. The ever-creative César coolly decided to do dessert first, with a polenta cake with black-walnut ice cream, though he was stressed that he didn't have enough prep time to turn out the fresh tortillas for his beet tostada second course. Shuai nodded to Chinatown with a barbecue duck-inspired polenta dish and beet dumplings filled with smoked fish. Meanwhile, Tristen toured Caribbean tradition with his cou-cou porridge with spicy Haitian sos and glazed beets with pork belly and beet pikliz, though he felt his Gorgonzola sherbet was far from good enough. ('I'm fucked if I get to the Gorgonzola.') Shuai's nostalgic polenta number won over the paddles of Kristen, Tom, and Gail Simmons, as well as the other judging panelists, immediately entering him into the season's final three. And thankfully for Tristen, he didn't have to get to the Gorgonzola after all, with his smoked beets plate taking it in round two. That left César and Bailey in a head-to-head Gorgonzola duel, an interesting match-up given that I always believed César would make it to the finals and was pleasantly surprised how far Bailey has come. And, seemingly more surprises were in store: Bailey's brûléed Gorgonzola redemption panned out, with her polenta gratinata successfully clinching the third-round win over César's cheese-laced butternut squash casserole. Unsurprisingly, however, was the level of emotion from all involved at seeing César go. 'I was just one away from the final cook. I just wanted that one more,' he sadly declared before making his exit. That weepiness segued into happy tears, though, with the realization that we officially have our final three for Top Chef season 22, with Shuai especially going into the finals strong with the challenge win and an added $15,000 Delta gift card in his pocket. 'It's a wild ride and a very exciting feeling to be standing where you are,' Kristen told him through tears, to which Shuai excellently responded: 'Stop crying, Kristen!' • So what do you think of our top three? Shuai and Tristen have been pretty dominant all season, while Bailey seemed to get a dark-horse edit by producers going into the finale. Does the quirky chef stand a chance? • Did anyone else get a little teary when a ladybug—thought to be a symbol of protection and positive energy from a deceased loved one—landed on Tristen's station during the Elimination cook, or should I set up a call with my therapist? • Given that Milan is one of the premier fashion capitals of the world, our trusty judges trio really stepped up their sartorial game this ep. That leather midi skirt on Gail? That striped overcoat on Kristen? Fantastica! More from A.V. 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