Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Mr. Chow - The Artful Palate of a Culinary Maestro & Masterful Collector
981 Plays10 months ago
Michael Chow may not sound familiar to you, but what may sound familiar is Mr. Chow, the name of his highly luxurious and booming restaurant chain. Mr. Chow is a collector of art, art deco furniture and objet, and just about anything that is part of his day to day, all the way down to his thoughts and expressions. Name the first shot of any movie and he can tell you everything. He’s as sharp as it gets. Everything he does he relates back to art and theater, it’s truly a piece of who he is. He is one of the most eccentric (in the best way) and fascinating people I have ever had the chance to speak with. He’s the type of collector who wills what he wants into his ecosystem. Everything he does is based on repetition and collecting. Sound like a true collector to you? Mr. Chow did not have the most conventional upbringing in China, with his father being at the top of stardom, of which is still celebrated in China today, and having left at a very early age. Mr. Chow eventually opened up his restaurants, and when he opened his first one in New York, it quickly became the hotspot of the likes of Warhol, Basquiat, and many others that will probably keep your jaw open for an uncomfortable period of time. In fact, Basquiat once created a piece for M and had it delivered right to his apartment. An artist himself, he has turned his passion for collecting into a personal hobby. He’s got stories beyond belief and you can see it all in his new HBO documentary AKA Mr. Chow. With honor, Mr. Chow for Collectors Gene Radio.
aka Mr. Chow - https://www.hbo.com/movies/aka-mr-chow
Mr. Chow - https://www.mrchow.com/
Michael Chow Art - https://www.m-michaelchow.com/copy-of-theater-of-painting
Recommended
Transcript
Artists as Saviors of Humanity
00:00:00
Speaker
Being a collector, I collected all the artists, all the creative people, a gathering, like a magnet, they all come to me. Because artists, they are the noble, they are the, in today's world, you know, these are antithesis of war, right? All the pain, all the chaos, all the cruelty, all going on. Artists are truly healers. They are the healers. They are the savior of humanity.
Introduction to Collector's Gene Radio
00:00:29
Speaker
What's going on everybody and welcome to collector's gene radio. This is all about diving into the nuances of collecting and ultimately finding out whether or not our guests have what we like to call the collector's gene. If you have the time, please subscribe and leave a review. It truly helps. Thanks a bunch for listening and please enjoy today's guest on collector's gene radio.
Who is Michael Chow?
00:00:53
Speaker
Michael Chow may not sound familiar to you, but what may sound familiar is Mr. Chow, the name of his highly luxurious and booming restaurant chain. Mr. Chow's a collector of art, art deco furniture and object, and just about anything that's part of his day to day, all the way down to his thoughts and expressions. Name the first shot of any movie and he could tell you everything. He's as sharp as it gets. Everything he does relates back to art and theater. It's truly a piece of who he is and what he grew up around.
00:01:20
Speaker
He's one of the most eccentric in the best way and fascinating people I've ever had the chance to speak with and he's truly the type of collector who wills what he wants into his ecosystem.
Chow's Early Life and First Restaurant
00:01:30
Speaker
Everything he does is based on repetition and collecting.
00:01:34
Speaker
Now, Mr. Chao did not have the most conventional upbringing in China with his father being at the top of stardom of which is still celebrated in China today. And having left at an early age, Mr. Chao eventually opened up his restaurants. And when he opened his first one in New York, it quickly became the hotspot of the likes of Warhol, Basquiat, and many others that will probably keep your jaw open for an uncomfortable period of time. In fact, Basquiat once created a piece of art for Em and had it delivered right to his apartment.
00:02:03
Speaker
An artist himself, he has turned his passion for collecting into a personal hobby. He's got stories beyond belief, and you could see it all in his new HBO documentary, AKA Mr. Chow. But for now, please enjoy. This is Mr. Chow for Collector's Dream Radio. M, AKA Mr. Chow, welcome to Collector's Dream Radio. Thank you for asking me.
00:02:27
Speaker
My pleasure. Before we get started, I just want to say congratulations on the wonderful documentary that just came out, aka Mr. Chow. I encourage everybody to go watch it. It was really special. Yes, I've been extremely lucky and fortunate to have such a good team. It's a magical team led by Nick, the director.
00:02:49
Speaker
to be precise, and with HBO, incredible company, all the producers, all the editors, Gene, the editor, and the whole thing went extremely well, and we're very happy.
Family, Destiny, and Challenges
00:03:04
Speaker
I would have to agree. It was really nice. I think for everybody that watches it, you let them into every aspect of your life and take them through the stages of getting to where you are today, and I thought it was really special. Thank you.
00:03:19
Speaker
So you come from a pretty incredible family of talent. Your father is one of China's most celebrated. Tell me a little bit about your upbringing. Well, as you know, I love movies, so I kind of feel that it's believed in destiny. And I started in movie terms, given certain obstacles. For instance, when I was born, I got asthma. And
00:03:45
Speaker
asthma in terms of association with various artists.
Life Transition Post-WWII
00:03:50
Speaker
By the way, my stand-up joke is usually, I hate people who drop names and Lady Gaga agrees with me. In reality, I now believe in dropping names. Comedy is reference and tragedy is universal.
00:04:10
Speaker
And dropping names is to do with reference. It's a shortcut to reference. If I say Napoleon, you wouldn't know which area we're talking about, although I take a long time to explain. So on the dropping name, I was born into a theatrical family. My father is a giant national treasure in the field of theater.
00:04:33
Speaker
In every way, when I say national treasure, I mean equal to people like, I don't know, all the great ones, you know, Shakespeare, if you will, or Beethoven or Martin Scorsese. So I was born into that and physically I got asthma. So I suffered a great deal and at the same time, very fortunate upbringing.
00:04:58
Speaker
And until when I'm 13, I was uprooted to England. Right. And England is kind of where you really got your roots. I mean, fast forwarding a little bit to the late sixties and you opened up the first Mr. Chapp. Well, England is 1952, just after the war, there were still rational suites and devastated Second World War.
00:05:28
Speaker
So I was in a very frightening experience. And I have to crawl out of the dungeon anywhere. So completely reverse of fortune. And so I built my to survive, basically. And then I escaped through a lot of movies. I saw a lot of movies. And I built my self-educated person and unconventional education.
00:05:58
Speaker
Absolutely. And as most people know you today for Mr. Chow, the restaurant group that you have, which is really a culmination of art, theater, food, and design. So today I kind of want to kick off our conversation by talking about art, because I feel like everything you've done in your career really centers around this, whether it was happenstance or by design.
New York and Artistic Connections
00:06:21
Speaker
But when you move from London to New York to open up the next groupings of Mr. Chow,
00:06:28
Speaker
You kind of get into this circle of who the world looks at as some of the biggest artists today, Warhol, Basquiat, Herring, all these folks, and they were avid visitors to your restaurants and ended up becoming very close friends. Is this where your love for art stems from and what sparked your interest in art collecting?
00:06:47
Speaker
Well, I was born as an artist. I fell in love with Beijing Opera when I was very young. And so that's my first love, first creative process. My father is a giant, and the Beijing Opera is total theater, means every aspect of theater is inside Beijing Opera.
00:07:05
Speaker
So I fell in love with that very early. But of course, when I was uprooted in 1952, that opportunity had been taken away. So I made the switch to being a painter. But painter, they won't let me do painting because I am certain race, certain
00:07:22
Speaker
You cannot be a painter, you know, it's very nationalistic, very narrowed. So they won't let me be a painter. Only thing I can do is given this laundry and the restaurant. So I turn restaurant into theater to turn into a creative process. So I retired from that. I painted religiously for 12 years.
00:07:44
Speaker
but then I enter the theater world, which is the restaurant world, which, and also internally, I have desire and need because my father is an expressionist and I am an expressionist painter. As an expressionist artist, we deal in injustice. When I, by what I mean by expressionist, starting from, let's say, William Turner, he's an expressionist.
00:08:12
Speaker
painter, as it were, and he deal with injustice. In his particular case, dealing with injustice, six years before his time, when he's at the end of his career, there was an incident about slave ship, which, to cut the long story short, the slave owner have 106 sick slaves. They chained them all together and throw them into the sea to be drowned. The reason for that is you can't claim
00:08:42
Speaker
with the sick slaves. However, with dead slaves, you can collect the money. And that particular incident, which eventually affected the American history even, you know, the outcry of abolished slavery, and so to speak, into civil war, in American civil wars related to that. But what I'm demonstrating here is that Turner, who's an artist,
00:09:06
Speaker
and who deals with expressionism, to deal with injustice. So artists always deal with injustice. And my father is truly a great expressionist theater person, and I'm a truly great, truly deals with pain and deal with injustice. So I continue to do so.
00:09:29
Speaker
But they don't allow me to paint anymore.
Art, Bias, and the Restaurant Business
00:09:33
Speaker
So I tried to have a desire and need to promote Chinese culture through the medium that are allowed to do so, which is the restaurant. So I made it into theater. Absolutely. Where did you learn to paint? I learned to paint very early. A few years arrived in England when I was something like 14, 15. First painting that moved me very much was the Dali Civil War painting.
00:09:59
Speaker
And I remember copying it and all that. But before that, I was always been very artistic. I did photography, you know, with a young lad, even in China.
00:10:08
Speaker
fascinated with movie. I'm a very visual artist. I'm borderline of illiterate. So I've taught on all that. I read very few books, but I visually developed very well, as you can see from my visual memory, i.e. movies and so on. I'm born to become a true artist, into the family, into my blood, in my DNA.
00:10:37
Speaker
And in particular, I'm a painter. In Chinese culture, the fine art are defined very clearly, which is painting, sculpture, poetry, and music. And this particular representation is clearly defined by Richard Serra, probably one of the greatest 20th century sculptor,
00:11:06
Speaker
Chit Chat with Charlie Rose in 2001 episode. If you go to there, Richard Serret defined these four mediums very clearly. Everything else is a secondary function because, first of all, art have to be useless and the heart have to transcend to spiritual and poetry level. To do that, only these four mediums can define it truly, which is, again, a sculptor painting.
00:11:35
Speaker
and music and the poetry. Now, we're aware that you actually stopped painting for a period of 50 years or so. Why was that so and what brought you back? Well, not quite 50 years, but 40 something years. And I had a good opportunity of meeting Jeffrey Deutsch. And then he noticed one of my early work and we start talking and then he started encouraging me.
00:12:00
Speaker
So I came back to painting 12 years ago and up the gate, I did a very good painting by shocking me. Good. And then the rest is history. I've been painting religiously more than any other human being in the last 12 years.
00:12:16
Speaker
day and night, day and night, physical big paintings, huge paintings. So I've been going through all that. But I still have a lot of resistance from the museum people and the artists, you know. So, but I'm coming now beginning to ease into it. Yeah. I mean, you could see it in the documentary, the scale of the pieces that you're working on are massive.
00:12:41
Speaker
Well, these scales are naturally, everyone has a scale, but I also do small ones as well. But so I'm very good fortune to my early education related to painting, starting from early 50s. And this is post World War Two, a richness of
00:13:02
Speaker
abstract expression are coming out in America,
Art Education and Master Influences
00:13:05
Speaker
and same with the European masters, as they were. And they've had a very rich European century, starting from Picasso, so to speak, Cubism, before Cubism, from collage, etc. So I went in the right place. And also, good fortune.
00:13:23
Speaker
England in the early 50s had a policy, everybody go to art school, you know, like so much as I went to, and Central. So the British Cultural Revolution, unlike the Chinese one, which is truly a Cultural Revolution, as it were, so to speak, breaks down classicism. So a lot of goodness came out of it. People like all the creativity of Great Britain, the so-called early swing in London, all these
00:13:52
Speaker
all the music, which is the stone and beetle, et cetera.
00:13:56
Speaker
even hairdressing, you know, Vidal and all the people, and even soccer matches, even every field of creativity came out of these, the product of these Oscars, which is amazing. So at that time, Britain in the sixties, very rich culture, Hollywood movies, the whole thing, both exciting time. And this is time where we will group together. And there was a truly very creative moment
00:14:24
Speaker
from and exported throughout the world, when I say throughout the world, mainly to United States, and even the result of which today we still feel it.
Trading Art for Food: A Unique Collection
00:14:35
Speaker
Absolutely. And I want to go back to a time when you're in New York and you are making these friendships with some of the biggest artists that we know today. And your friendship with them was maybe a little bit more unconventional than most. I mean, they were frequenting Mr. Chow almost every day or at least every week. And then they started to make you paintings personally, specifically for you.
00:15:01
Speaker
Well, that was requested by me and also smart man. Yeah. Thank you. There's a tradition in Europe in particular.
00:15:12
Speaker
There's a restaurant in Zurich called Arakan. It starts with a very long name. Anyway, fantastic restaurant where artists go there, including Picasso, including Martis, all the people who are dying there. And they give work for food or whatever. So there's that one and another one in the south of France called on something.
00:15:34
Speaker
And again, when you walk in today, you see Leger, you see Sida, the sculptor, and all the different artists. So I mimicked that in Mr. Chow when it's first opening.
00:15:49
Speaker
And fortunately, I asked Peter Blake to do Antisys of Racism, and he made this painting of me, painted me yellow because it's Antisys of Racism, and had two bodyguards. I have an old body, and I had perm hair for whatever reason. And so that was the first portrait from which I asked various people, started with Hockney, and eventually with Jean-Michel, with Keith Haring, or the giants of 20th century, Saikon Lee.
00:16:18
Speaker
in name dropping again. And 40-90% all become very important artists. So I had the good fortune of that collection, which is very rich, very unique. And especially my artist book, I have at least 100 names on it.
00:16:35
Speaker
and they're all giants, you know, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France, France.
00:16:59
Speaker
And there was a... The calm door, right? Calm door, yeah. And a person walks up to one o'clock in the morning and says, oh, these people are making noise. So the manager says, oh, no, no, no, these people are artists. They can't do whatever they want. So I say, wow, that's very incredible. So Mr. Child, the restaurant,
00:17:19
Speaker
Artists can't do any wrong. They come for their the royalty. So, being a collector, I collected all the artists, all the creative people, a gathering, like a magnet, they all come to me. Because artists, they are the noble, they are the, in today's world, you know, these are the antithesis of war, right?
00:17:41
Speaker
Absolutely. All the pain, all the chaos, all the cruelty, all going on. Artists are truly healers. They are the healers. They are the savior of humanity. So this is the noble profession one can have. And since I'm so lucky and good fortune, be able to paint, using paint,
00:18:04
Speaker
known to man.
Dedication to Painting
00:18:05
Speaker
Before that, there was a remark made by an Australia retrospective of Francis Bacon, and he talked about Bacon, different type of paint, known to man. So I said, okay, one day when I grew up, I want to do the same. So after Bacon passing away,
00:18:25
Speaker
the painting I'm doing, I'm using different type of paint known to men. So I'm the luckiest person in the world because I was able to, especially in twilight of my life, I'm able to do that, be able to make poetry and make music through paint.
00:18:44
Speaker
Absolutely, and as the years go on, so you amassed this collection from all these artists that became friends of yours, and then as your years of collecting go on, are you hunting more paintings from these artists or are you focusing in other areas? No, I mean, if the opportunity is correct that someone would paint a portrait of me or whatever. Yes, they've been adding it on, but basically that collection is important because it's a documentation
00:19:10
Speaker
of three-quarters of a millennium. So it's an important document. And also, I had a good fortune in the right place at the right time, starting from London, then New York, and now Los Angeles. But globally, just like the Dada movement, after the devastation of the First World War in the trenches,
00:19:31
Speaker
you can see the landscape of greatness, gray carcass, gas killing, mass killing. And the subsequent of that is Monet with his cataract bat last 10 years producing this landscape.
00:19:47
Speaker
That landscape with Lily and all that is, again, is opposite to the landscape of the First World War, from which the Dada movement started. The Dada movement started because through acute pain of humanity's suffering. And this is a fuel to great art coming out. And the Dada movement started with literature and ended up with painting, Duchamp, et cetera, down the road, so cleansing of a new way of thinking.
00:20:15
Speaker
And again, data movements, it's an international movement. It's anti-nationalism, okay? So this is where I come from since I suffer so much from racism. So it's, you know, the cliche of John Lennon, you know, imagine a world without border and all that sort of thing. So data movements share the same philosophy, have to be international, have to be
00:20:41
Speaker
healing. At the end, it's healing Monet's, you know, that's by the way, you know, he painted that finished painting that 19 1925, and not recognized until 1950s, and have to needs Pollock to remind us that how great Bonnet was, you know, which is kind of sad, but but have a happy ending in the sense that now this this particular initiative on a whatever it's called in near Paris,
00:21:09
Speaker
that these paintings are amazing, amazing documents. So what I'm trying to say is the great art comes from pain, okay? And come from crucifixion, as they were. So unfortunately, that's a natural state of life. When it comes to collecting, whether it's art collecting, I know you're big into art deco items as well. How fierce is Mr. Chow in the auction room?
00:21:35
Speaker
Well, I don't know about that, but I'm born collector. I collect everything, okay? As you can tell, I collect, I want to word it carefully now, post title first shot.
00:21:48
Speaker
of all movies, right? All classic movies, exception of comedy, horror, and musical. Apart from 3C, they made any three movies, classic, and I will give you first shot of post title, right? Which is, so I have a good visual memory, so it's a game, but it's quite interesting one. And so I collect everything. I collect
00:22:12
Speaker
I collect things, I collect watches, I collect antiquity, I collect doorknobs or chairs, so that's what I do. So I have a good fortune, I have a good memory, and that gives me knowledge and creativity, because in collecting, you file it away, mostly subliminal way,
00:22:40
Speaker
And it's very rich, fortunate and rich, talented, as it were, so to speak, to painting as well, you know, because you're collecting the, when you make a mark, your reference comes in to you, you know, you can immediately respond.
00:22:58
Speaker
Absolutely. When you open Mr. Chow, I mean, obviously you have this collecting mentality and we'll get to this question at the end, but I'm pretty sure you have the collector's gene. So as you open up more and more of Mr. Chow locations, are you viewing them as a collection of yours of each restaurant represents something different? It's a different time. Again, you know, that movement is an international affair. So very young, I'm suffering from
00:23:26
Speaker
racism against me, the more provincial, the more nationalistic, the more pain, right? The more universal better. So why not have international, you know, so always nice to have
00:23:39
Speaker
Mr. Charles, Rome, Paris, all that stuff. So I was the first restaurant sort of travel, do you see? I was the first restaurant, the Zionist restaurant, that went from one city to another in this case. And I've always been very good fortune. We celebrated in Mr. Charles Beverly Hills, where I'm sitting now, for the 50 years. And one of the staff had been with me from day one, and we gave him a big party, etc.
00:24:05
Speaker
But on the night of Mr. Chow open 50 years ago, Marvin Gaye was playing through my partner Jerry Moss, late partner Jerry Moss. And then we have Oliver de Havilland, we have Clint Eastwood, Woody Stroh, Eartha Kitt, and this goes on. This is 50 years ago, okay? The world was like a desert. So, yeah, I collect everything. I collect all knobs, I collect
00:24:30
Speaker
ACEs, I collect ACE doctors, I collect ACEs, because ACEs, if you collect ACE doctors, you feel safer, because ACE doctors only talk to other ACE doctors. So you divide, for instance, Oppenheimer,
00:24:49
Speaker
collect aces. All the physicists, they line them up. Maybe there's 80 of them or whatever. They're all aces. So the result of which you collected at the bomb. By the way, while we are talking about Oppenheimer, in abstract expressionist painting in particular, it's a recipe. My restaurant has recipes. The atom bomb is a recipe. So everything is a recipe, okay? And in order to make a
00:25:19
Speaker
good painting, you have to know in your recipe. For instance, if you want to make a good dish, every detail is a universe in the sense that you start with shopping, right? If you're going to get a carrot, a tomato, you got to have the best carrot, best tomato, best whatever. So same with painting and same with my father Beijing opera. In painting, for instance, you want to be best. So in my painting,
00:25:47
Speaker
Every language of vocabulary got to be the best, meaning corner. You have to master it. Edges, you got to master it. You got to master all the trips. For instance, my trip is 360 degree. My splash is
00:26:00
Speaker
inside every mark I make and I don't use a brush. So everything has to be mastered. And another thing I think is important is repetition, which in Chinese term is called kung fu. Kung fu is repetition. Let's say in the repetition you will find inspiration. In the reputation you will find harmony.
00:26:22
Speaker
in the repetition. So in other words, you know, that's why they keep on doing the same thing. In the repetition, although you think it's the repetition, every repetition is like a prayer. It has never the same. Even you say the thing a million times, each time it has slightly different. So in the repetition is what it's all about. In the repetition, you will find prayer, you will find all this stuff.
00:26:51
Speaker
I think what you're getting at is, especially when it comes to art, repetition matters in a lot because you need to be consistent with the type of art that you're producing, but you could splash the paint in the same area on 50 different pieces of works, and they're gonna be different. I think repetition has a subliminal memory. It requires you do it one million times before you can transcend. Just like when you whip a cream,
00:27:17
Speaker
If you were whipped up after the climax, it's going to turn to water. Okay. So you want to whip it, but every time you whip inside there, there's a memory. There's a repetition of the whipping, but every time is different, but takes X amount of time before it went to go to climax. So no shortcut. Okay. These are natural order of things. And also in the repetition, you will find calmness. You will find understanding. It's like a chant, right?
00:27:46
Speaker
That's when the chant is always repeating. And in singing, you do that. So until you're... That's what's happening. You're trying to bring out your internal. And that internal is the most precious part of you, okay? The internal is connected to the universe of truth. And that's what makes us human being more understanding. That's how we...
00:28:16
Speaker
propelled the culture forward. As an artist and also as an art collector, what's the juxtaposition between the art that you like to create and the art that you like to collect? Same thing. Everything is the same thing. Everything is the same thing because everything has universe. Everything has a focus.
00:28:37
Speaker
Everything has a charmer, which is a Chinese word for technique, knack, secret, all in one word. And everything has a negative tendency. So you have to know what the focus is, and you have to know what the opposite to that, which is a negative tendency. So if you know the negative, you know the focus, and you know the charmer, you know those three things, you know what you are doing. I.e., for instance, if you mentioned cappuccino, what's the focus of cappuccino, you think? The froth. Correct. Now, what is a negative tendency
00:29:07
Speaker
of cappuccinos broth. Either too much froth or not enough. No. Or look like Jay Mansfield bubble bath.
00:29:19
Speaker
She's naked in the bath, so they cover her with a lot of bubbles. Cappuccino with a lot of bubbles is no good. If you go to Milan and have a cappuccino, you see zero bubbles, okay? You see a cream. Now, what is a charmer? How do you make zero bubbles and look creamy, the froth, okay? Because you're all in the wrist, and you put it in like, yum, yum, yum, thing inside the cappuccino.
00:29:48
Speaker
And then in the risk, you would develop the internal spontaneous when you arrive. So now you know the focus, and you know the charmer, it's where it is, and you don't even know where to go, and you know the negative tendency, which you don't want a lot of bubble, okay? So that's just cappuccino. If you name, for instance, why you wear a shirt, tell me why you wear a shirt.
00:30:18
Speaker
So I don't get public indecency? No, that's in general. You wear a shirt, if you don't know...
00:30:26
Speaker
why you wear a shirt. And if you put on a suit and a shirt, you don't know how to wear it. Do you understand? Right. So now I'm going to give you the reason why you wear a shirt. The reason in the 18th century or whatever, they're no dry cleaning and they have embroidered garment outside. So they need a shirt to protect the oil of the sleeve and the neck to the garment. Am I correct? Yes.
00:30:49
Speaker
and therefore you must wear the shirt longer than the garment and you must wear the shirt taller on your neck part and therefore why in that case lot of men
00:31:04
Speaker
wear the jacket longer than the shirt, sleeve-wise. So that means they don't know how to dress. Do you understand? Sure. So all these things, I think about it all day long, that's what I do. So everything is how-to, okay? And by the way, when you do that all the time, you never make any mistakes, and you sleep at night, as it were, so to speak. So in other words, the idea is to make everything harmonious.
00:31:30
Speaker
And everything harmonious is not over, not under, just right. And if you practice that, that becomes a religion, and thus, therefore, you can transcend to a different place. Amazing. Now that the documentary is finished and released and out there to the world, now you have, you know, your time to focus on, back onto your art and Mr. Chow restaurants. Is there anything that has you excited right now, now that the documentary is gone? Yes. I'm doing two things.
00:32:01
Speaker
One, on the restaurant level, 54 years ago, there are two kinds of Chinese food. One is the Chinese food, which is the greatest food banner ever created, which is most profound, most complex, most vocabulary, 99% of which are not exportable. Second kind of Chinese food, which is created in America through the railroad and
00:32:26
Speaker
ugly history involved with that. But nevertheless, over 100 years, not food were produced. And the most famous dish, of course, is chop suy or whatever. Third kind of Chinese food, which I curated and created over half a century ago and were tested by global elite and noble clientele.
00:32:49
Speaker
Now, this is the pyramid. And I did that over 50 years ago, the high-end restaurant. So if you go to any high-end restaurant around the globe, you will find some of my DNA in there, okay?
00:33:04
Speaker
Now, what I'm going to do is go to the bottom part, which is for the people, by the people, as they were, make it very delicious with new technology to contribute, to make Chinese food go to the, not the middle level, no way to serve it, so to speak. Fast food, fast casual, that's the word.
00:33:24
Speaker
So this is where I'm going to enter. And hopefully at the end of the day, before I leave this world, everybody will be eating this delicious food at affordable prices, etc. And is this already in the works? Is there a first location almost ready
Future of Chinese Fast-Casual Dining?
00:33:38
Speaker
to go?
00:33:38
Speaker
Yes, already I'm doing, I've got factory, I've got everything all happening. So call me again in a few months time and I'll announce it with you. Oh, that'd be great. And that's one thing. And the other thing in the words of Jean-Michel Basquiat, he just wants to be the best painter in his category. Okay. Sure. So I want to do the same. I want to be the best living artist in my category, which is after expressionist painting. Okay.
00:34:07
Speaker
And so your plans are working on that right now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Every breath I take is going towards that. Amazing. All right. Let's wrap it up here with the collector's dream rundown. So you can answer these questions based on any of the things that you collect. Sound good? All right. What's the one that got away? Not really. Not really. Because first of all, collecting
00:34:32
Speaker
It's a temporary caretaker, okay? And usually I'm being extraordinarily lucky in everything I do, including collecting. If I will, they will come to me. They will usually come to me. And even the project, the two projects I'm doing, my will is so strong.
00:34:52
Speaker
subliminaly and consciously, they usually come to me. They eventually will come to me. And this is based on belief, you see? This is based on belief. If you believe it, it's going to come, you know? Absolutely. Yeah. How about the unobtainable? So this is something that is maybe just in a museum or a private collection, and it's just out of your reach, no matter how much you try and will it into existence? Oh, that's very easy. Recently,
00:35:20
Speaker
The painting did 800 years ago, Chinese masterpiece, which was shown, I think, either in Washington, there are two paintings, classic. They're kind of a Chinese Mona Lisa. It's always been my favorite. It's five, I think five, five persimmon, you know, that fruit. And it was only finished, never came out of China and came out of China. That's my favorite painting ever.
00:35:47
Speaker
It's very powerful. And also, Balabic's square is another one of my favorite paintings. You know, these are – but these paintings are in my head, so I live with it. You know what I'm saying? Sure. Next one is the page one rewrite. So if you could collect anything in the world, money, no object, what would it be? Well, in my younger days, I wanted very large bathroom.
00:36:15
Speaker
I want to get a huge piece of marble and get Harry more to carve out the whole thing, including the toilet. That'd be special. That'd be special. Yeah. The goat. So this is someone that you look up to in the collecting world that you think is a really great collector besides yourself. Oh, that's easy. That's Duce. Duce. You don't know who it is? I don't. Uh-oh.
00:36:42
Speaker
If you don't know, who do you say? Okay, who do you say is a couture aristocrat in the turn of the century, last century, turn of 19th century, 19 something, early 19th?
00:36:58
Speaker
And he's a aristocrat, he's a couture, you know. He inherited all the masterpieces, the Rembrandt, the whole thing. And then on his wedding night, his wife died or whatever. So he sold that collection, which I have a catalog of which. Then he collected the lalito, which had good, incredible piece of lalito, which I had in Mr. Ciao, I bought it from sale.
00:37:25
Speaker
And he collected many Brancusi's bird in flight, looks like elephant teeth as they were, so to speak. And he collected Malbaza d'Avignon's before we end up in MoMA, the incredible, most important painting ever painted by Picasso, so to speak. And he collected the Rutho's such nature and inside the furniture, Legrand, all kinds of goodies. He was the greatest collector world have ever seen.
00:37:55
Speaker
impossible to beat. And most importantly, do you feel that you were born with the collector's gene?
Does Chow Have the Collector's Gene?
00:38:02
Speaker
Absolutely. Before I was born. There you have it. And thank you so much for joining me on collector's gene radio today. I think your zest for life and collecting for all intensive purposes is truly remarkable. And I'm always keeping an eye on everything that you have going on. So thank you again for joining me. And I hope we get to do this again soon. Thank you so much.
00:38:27
Speaker
All right, that does it for this episode. Thank you all for listening to Collector's Gene Radio.