Lili Zhou

EXECUTIVE CHEF

A great chemist, passionate musician, aspiring fashion designer, industrious colleague, magnificent cook, kind sister, and dutiful wife. Her ambition led her to fight through the political repression of China’s Cultural Revolution and brought her back to the cosmopolitan university campuses of Shanghai. As the top of her class, she was able to obtain a rare visa to attend graduate school in the United States, where she reunited with her husband and studied for her Master’s degree at the City University of New York during the day while waiting tables on roller skates at night.

Raising a family was the next challenge, and she somehow made even putting twenty meals a week on the kitchen table for me and my dad over the course of twenty years a breeze, which was no small task, given our ravenous hungers and the fact that she was also simultaneously earning her Ph.D. in chemistry while doing cutting edge research at one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. Nothing could stop her, as she embarked on a highly successful seventeen-year career, traversing the globe to develop chemical research facilities and techniques in Europe, India and China. All the while, she found the time to publish papers and give lectures at some of the greatest universities in the world as well as manage an entire generation of younger colleagues.

John Z. Fang

CHEF DE CUISINE

A loving son and amateur chef. He cooked through nearly all of Lili's recipes, but burned himself a couple of times in doing so.

Justine Chilvers

SOUS CHEF

An aspiring chef and cooking show aficionado. A lawyer by day and a food critic & photographer by night.