“He was happy to schmooze the customers. I didn’t want that kind of attention.”
At The Panda, he and his sibling would regularly be called on to work behind the bar or wash dishes during busy hours. And there, Wan discovered his aptitude for cooking.
First to become a “face”, though, was Gok Wan, the author, DJ and presenter who has starred in fashion television shows and documentaries, on stage and in his own Chinese-cooking shows. And while Kwoklyn Wan has taken a different route to stardom, the brothers’ paths have lately begun to converge.
Wan, who stresses, “I never wanted to be famous for the sake of being recognised if I didn’t have something to show”, might never have made it to our screens at all if it were not for his other passion: martial arts.
“I opened my kung fu school in 2000 and got used to standing before an audience and teaching,” he says. “Because of that I became comfortable on camera and I think that comes across.
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“I’m not trying to be a personality, I’m just trying to teach somebody something, so I think there’s a natural rapport with the audience.”
“The Amazon series is doing well,” he says during a video call from Leicester. “The production team said, ‘Let’s launch it on YouTube, too.’ It’s a good idea, because there’s a whole new audience that hasn’t seen it yet.
“So it will remain on Amazon but also be available on YouTube.
“People may have heard of the show and have the cookbooks, but if they don’t have an Amazon Prime subscription … In lockdown almost everyone had one because everyone shopped online,” says Wan. “But perhaps with the credit crunch people don’t have that any more.
“Now they can still watch the show [on YouTube] and it’s going to get us out to a wider audience.
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The Kwoklyn’s Chinese Takeaway Kitchen YouTube debut is imminent – and the Wan juggernaut won’t stop there. At 50 and recently married, he is more infectiously enthusiastic than ever about sharing his love of cooking.
This cheery devotion to his art now sees Wan complete a career circle on a path that also traces his evolution into confident television host. Filming begins in January on Nostalgic Bites: A Journey Back in Time with Kwoklyn. Scheduled to hit YouTube in a few weeks, it’s an unexpectedly family affair.
“The nice thing about Nostalgic Bites is that we bought my mum and dad’s old restaurant, where I learned to cook, The Panda. We’ve turned what was a 1980s restaurant back into a 130-year-old Victorian house,” says Wan.
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“Guests are going to come to where I grew up, where I learned to cook and we’re going to talk about their first bite of Chinese food. Who were they with? Their grandparents, their mum and dad? Were they on holiday, was it with their boyfriend or girlfriend?
“We will talk about the food, how it was delivered, did they eat it off a plate with a knife and fork or did they try chopsticks?
“They’ll talk about a dish they love – could be a sweet and sour, a curry, a spring roll. There’s a Chinese takeaway opposite, so we’re going to order their favourite dish and get it delivered to the front door – as part of the footage.
“We’ll sit and eat and see if it really brings back those memories – the taste, texture, smell. If it doesn’t, I’m going to try to replicate that dish they remember having for the first time,” he says.
“If it does – fantastic! Brilliant! And if it was around Christmas time, maybe, and they remember a certain song playing, we’ll feature that. We’ll reproduce as much as we can.”
Today, the once-reluctant Wan is often recognised on the street and appreciates a certain fame – something of which he might soon have a surfeit, with at least two other streaming-bound shows in the works.
As he puts it, “Like all wheelers and dealers or entrepreneurs, or whatever you want to call us, we’ve always got several projects on the go!”
See Amazon Prime and YouTube for Kwoklyn’s Chinese Takeaway Kitchen.
Nostalgic Bites: A Journey Back in Time with Kwoklyn will be available on YouTube in February or March.