Adventures In Food With Amy Poon
During lockdown, Amy Poon revived the family business founded by her father Bill Poon, a seventh generation master chef, in 1973. Bill and his wife Cecilia opened several restaurants in London and earned a coveted Michelin star before retiring in 2006. Now, the Poon's legacy continues as Poon's Wontoneria. We sat down with Amy to geek out about all things wontons and soak up her most memorable food adventures.
Tell us about the wontons…
When you literally translate wonton [from Cantonese], ‘won’ is the cloud and ‘ton’ is to swallow. So wonton means ‘swallowing clouds’. And they are just little parcels of celestial joy!
Why did you start your wontoneria?
I suppose it goes way back. When I was about 15, I wanted a pair of black boots, which were an obscene amount of money, and my mother wouldn't buy them for me. So I went to work with my aunt, in the very first Poon’s in Lisle Street for an entire Easter holiday, wrapping wontons. I think I must have wrapped - I don't know - 10,000 wontons over the course of a month just to pay for the boots.
But this particular iteration of wontons came about because… I just dreamt up the name ‘wontoneria’ one day. Like pizzeria, gelateria or salumeria. And I thought, ‘Wontoneria! Why not?’ In the middle of lockdown in 2021, lovely Stevie Parle got in touch and said, ‘Can we do something?’ I said, ‘Stevie, I have no chefs, no kitchen and no money. But I've got some recipes. And he said, ‘Well, I have a kitchen. Just come and we'll figure it out’. So Wontoneria was born, launched with Stevie at Joy at Portobello, in February of 2021 it during Chinese New Year. It was meant to be a one-off but it all went a bit mad - we did 5,000 wontons in that first weekend! And then we decided that we should just continue.
Talk to us about the wonton fillings.
We had to take a lot of things into consideration, because usually with wontons the fresher they're eaten, the better. When you go to a noodle shop in Hong Kong, they're literally wrapping them and then dropping them in water. We started out with wonton kits, but they were fiddly and annoying, and people got nervous about not being able to make them themselves.
So we had to think about things like shelf life and how fresh they would keep the fillings. Moisture tends to transfer from the fillings to the skin, which make them a bit soft and soggy, even though they're actually fine to eat.
And of course, we had to take into consideration allergens, and there are a lot of prawn allergies out there. So this one contains pork and bamboo shoot, whereas the traditional Chinese wonton is pork and prawn.
Do you have any favourite food destinations?
Vietnam is one of my favourite places to escape to. Hong Kong. And Tokyo. There are probably more Michelin star restaurants in Japan than anywhere else in the world. And only because the Japanese are such good students - they are precise and they are conscientious and diligent. If you tell them 47 grains of rice, they will literally measure out 47 grains of rice! In fact, that’s where I fell in love with Indian food. It was only in my 20s when working in Japan that I discovered Indian food in Tokyo.
Share a food memory…
One of my greatest memories was when I went off-grid for about 10 days on the Mongolia Steppes with my husband and kids. There was no electricity, no running water, none of that. We had a cook with us along with our guide, who brought a hunk of meat that she had wrapped in a cold wet cloth. And so day one and two - the meat tasted fine. Day three - it was quite gamey... day four... I was convinced that we had extra protein in there that was moving!
By day seven, we were in the middle of literally nowhere, there wasn't a 7-eleven anywhere in sight for a snack. The children had run out of their emergency supplies of Kit Kat bars and everything that we wanted to eat had been eaten. And it was hot during the day, so everyone's melting to mush. We had that fermented horse milk that was kind of an acquired taste, and Mongolian cheeses but nothing that you could really fill your belly with.
And the cook got out her little bowl, put some flour into it and just mixed and kneaded away. We built a fire and set a cast iron pan on it and she made the most incredible spring onion flatbreads. We fell on them like ravenous vultures.
So I think food is always to do with the setting: it's your environment and who you're with. And so few of us are ever hungry.
What are some memories of working in your parents’ restaurant?
The funny thing is I didn't really work work in them, per se. I was never allowed in the kitchen, because they were far too professional, far too high octane and far too dangerous. It was loud and noisy and hot and heavy. So I was only allowed in the kitchen between service. My first memories in my parents’ restaurant was when they had Covent Garden. As you came in the door, there was a cloakroom - which no one has anymore! I would sit there on a stool with a book and some raffle tickets. Then I progressed to work in the bar, and then front-of-house. I think there's a real sense of joy when you give someone hospitality; feeding someone, putting food on the table, bringing them a drink and then they're smiling and eating. When you feed somebody, that's the moment you've made them happy. I think that's something quite special.
How did you learn to cook?
I'm SO not a chef, I'm not trained. I don’t know what I call myself - a jack of all trades? Funnily enough, I learned early days to cook with my mother rather than my father, because my father was in a professional kitchen. But my mother had to cook for him, which arguably was a harder job. So I was her sous chef, commis and pot washer. But my father and I talk about food, we talk about recipes a lot. But you notice the difference between cooking in a professional kitchen and cooking in the family home.
Are there two different needs being met?
When you cook in a professional kitchen you're thinking, ‘I've got to feed 80 people tonight and they want their food within 15 minutes of sitting down’. There's lots of steps you take and it's never as fresh because nobody is going to wait the hour it takes to roast a chicken.
But there's a purity in home cooking that I really enjoy, and also because it really is an expression of what I call ‘edible love’, when you cook for somebody and you're not being paid to do it. So you think about what they'd like to eat and then you go to the market, you shop for it, and you choose carefully - you choose the freshest fish you can find and you come home and you wash everything, prep everything and you chop everything up. It’s a lot of effort and all the while you're thinking of this person you're cooking for.
If you could order Dishpatch from any restaurant in the world, which restaurant would it be?
It would probably be from my mother. Well, it depends on your mood right? Because sometimes you feel like something incredibly lavish.
Is it different when your parents cook for you?
Yeah! Everybody's mother cooks the best version of whatever their comfort food is. But I do think my mother's homemade Cantonese tonic soups are superior. Even my children love them - especially the youngest - she literally sighs when she drinks it. It’s very primal and deep felt. Kinda like <sighs> from the belly, you know? But I'd probably order something that I didn't cook myself, and I don't cook Indian, so probably some Indian food from Japan!