Cooking Up Chinese In Times Square

by Priya Rao | Originally appeared in Cooking Up Chinese In Times Square, New York | Updated Oct. 5, 2010

The third annual NTDTV International Chinese Culinary Competition Banquet

After a two-day, live-action cookoff that transformed modern-day Times Square into China circa the Tang Dynasty, Flushing, Queen’s Yongyi Jiang and Las Vegas’s Ze Zheng reigned supreme at Sunday’s third annual NTDTV International Chinese Culinary Competition Banquet held at Chelsea Piers’ Pier Sixty.

The pair, who specialize, respectively, in Sichuan and Cantonese styles, competed against 33 other chefs from around the world including Australia, Hong Kong and Japan. (There were no entrants from China.)

NTDTV International Chinese Culinary Competition Banquet held at Chelsea Piers' Pier Sixty.

Yongyi Jiang, chef of Chengdu 23 in Wayne, NJ wins award

“I was very surprised that I won,” said Mr. Jiang who works at Chengdu 23 in Wayne, N.J. “It was a lifetime opportunity to cook in Times Square.”

During the banquet, Mr. Jiang designed some of the evening’s most delightful dishes such as a Chilean sea bass in yushiang sauce, Szechuan dumplings and scallops in fragrant scallion oil. Asked what Mr. Jiang was going to do with the $10,000 prize money that he was awarded, he responded, “I’m too tired right now to even think about it, and I have to go back to cooking.”

—Priya Rao