'Wok With Yan' star is back after three decades

Beloved TV chef taught an entire generation about Cantonese cooking with his signature humour and aprons adorned with wok-related puns

- KARON LIU

Stephen Yan, the Canadian celebrity chef who hosted "Wok With Yan" on CBC from 1980 to 1995, has been out of the public eye for 30 years. Yan is now doing a merchandise collaboration with RetroKid, a Toronto-based nostalgia clothing line.

Wok ever happened to chef Stephen Yan? Over 15 years and more than 500 episodes of his show “Wok With Yan,” the Hong-Kong-born chef taught thousands of households how to make classic Cantonese dishes like beef and broccoli, as well as hundreds of wok-related puns. The series aired on CBC from 1980 to 1995. Since the show ended, fans across Canada have wondered about his whereabouts.

Now, after nearly 30 years since he was last in front of a camera, the 85-year-old Vancouver resident is back in the spotlight with a merch collaboration with the Toronto-based, millennial-nostalgia-fuelled clothing brand Retrokid.

Yan and Retrokid co-founder Steve Gaskin sat down with the Star to talk about the real story behind the man with a thousand wok puns.

Over the course of 15 years and hundreds of episodes, you appeared in thousands of households across Canada, but not much is known about how you became a TV chef. How did you get from Hong Kong to Canada?