Mr Worldwide

How does a country earn its stripes to become a destination for foodies? For Alan Yau – most known for bringing Asian food to the UK – it’s all about creating a demand for your country’s cuisine and doing so strategically.

- Char Maine Tai

Alan Yau can’t sit still. Throughout our 90-minute chat, he’s leaning backward, sitting up, shuffling his feet and gesticulating as he speaks. He wants to be known as an entrepreneur because that way, people will remember him for his “cool, daring concepts”. But it’s difficult to tear Yau’s name away from his restaurants. After all, he’s the man who popularised Asian food in the UK and branched out subsequently to China, India, Italy, Japan, South Korea, the US, and UAE. Today, we are at Madame Fan, his first Southeast Asian venture. The Hong Kong-born, UK-bred entrepreneur talks about the difficulties of running a restaurant and the power of food.

You have numerous successful businesses all around the world. What took you so long to open a restaurant in Southeast Asia?