[Chef's Table] John Liu of Long-Running Coquille & Scarpetta

Chef's Table isn't your average Q&A. We scrapped the tired interview routine and went for something a little tastier: dinner. Here we are, wining and dining with some of Shanghia's best chefs, no scripts, no fluff–just food, drink, and whatever else comes up. It's raw, like a good sashimi, but polished up so you can enjoy it too. Got a chef we should dine with? Let us know in the comments.

Anybody can come up with a sexy idea for a restaurant. But there are a few among us with the grit to make that idea a reality. John Liu is one of them. While his college classmates were funneling cheap beers at keggers, he was writing up restaurant business plans. After he escaped corporate life, he didn't do a stage or enroll in culinary school. He went on a quasi-monastic, self-taught crash course, poring over every cookbook and restaurant menu he could get his hands on. Some might call this obsessive behavior, but if you've ever sat down to a meal at Scarpetta or Coquille, you know that it's paid off. We had a marathon dinner with Liu to learn how an investment banker-turned-ad man becomes a successful self-described "executive chef/owner/designer/investor/whatever."

Tonight we're dining with him at Coquille, a multi-year Michelin and Black Pearl restaurant.

CNS: What were you doing before you got into the food industry?

My dad was in tech. He worked for IBM. And when you're an ABC, there are usually only a few choices available to you – doctor, lawyer, engineer, that kind of thing. I didn't want to be a software guy. So, I studied economics, and my first job was at Lehman Brothers in Taipei.

I spent almost two years there, and I hated it because all the investment banking guys on the M&A side were always taking clients out to dinner while I was at the office all day doing research.

Around 2003, I visited Shanghai, and the place just blew me away. So I quit my job, came here, and then our family had a venture capital firm. I did that for about three years, and then my dad's company was doing software. Most of their clients were based in the US, and I'm bilingual, so it made sense for me to go help him with client management. So, after another three years, my dad said, "Look, are you interested in going further in this company?" I said, "Hell no. Not interested at all."

I wasn't sure what to do next, but I took an interest in consumer psychology, trying to figure out what prompts people to click and buy things. I had no advertising experience, so no agencies would hire me. Then, one night, I was cooking dinner at a friend's house. He worked for an ad agency, and he was talking about how stressed he was about maybe losing a client. I ended up pulling an all-nighter with him and helped him build out the client's engagement strategy.

The next day, my friend's boss calls him and says, "This is pretty good. Who did this? Because I know it wasn't you." Then my friend says, "Come in and talk to my managing director and explain your thoughts on this." The guy hired me, and that's what I did until around 2009. That was when I saw the writing on the wall with social media and influencers. I just didn't see how agencies could keep justifying their rates when you get your message out on social platforms for next to nothing. So, I left the agency. I was about 29 or 30 at the time, and it was my first real vacation.

CNS: We haven't even gotten to the food part yet...

My mom actually owned a restaurant where we are sitting right now. It was a Vietnamese place called Hua Yue Lou. She was subletting the space next door to an Italian couple who ran a very mediocre trattoria called Mare e Monti. I don't think it lasted much longer than six months. So, when they left, she came to me and said, "You remember when you were 19, and you wanted to open a restaurant?" She was right. I had written a business plan and everything. "I have this space. You have to pay me rent, but I'll give you a deal."

I ran the numbers, and it didn't make any sense. I almost quit before I even started. But then I just started shaving costs off here and there. Then I asked myself, "It's a 23-seat restaurant. Do I really need a GM? Do I really need a chef?" Only then did the numbers even begin to make sense.

Then, I basically closed myself up in a room for six months, bought, like, 300 books, and tabbed out every single one of them. I created this massive Excel sheet of all these recipes based on seasonality, difficulty, main ingredient, whatever. Then I did a ton of research in Italy and the United States to learn what a successful menu looks like.

Basically, I started my restaurant career as the executive chef/owner/designer/investor/whatever for Scarpetta. Meanwhile, my mom is still running her Vietnamese place here. It wasn't doing well, and a few years later, I took the space over. That's when I took out a massive bank loan, hired Anna Bautista as our chef, and she helped me build Coquille.

CNS: Walk us through these dishes you're feeding us tonight...

CNS: How old were you when you first started cooking?

I was a kid making mantous (steamed buns) and curry puffs with my grandma! She had chickens and ducks and all that stuff, so I learned about the cycle of life.

CNS: Let's shift gears. Do you think fine dining can suck the joy out of eating?

I think 90 percent of fine dining sucks the joy out of dining. But that other 10 percent can be life-changing.

I mean, it's like movies. You could have Brad Pitt, and you could have the best director in the world. But if you have a crappy cinematographer, you're screwed. You could have Brad Pitt, an amazing cinematographer, and a really crappy director, and you're screwed. You could have Brad Pitt, a great director, a great cinematographer, and a crappy screenplay, and you're screwed. That's how I look at restaurants.

But the most important thing, I think, is the director. And what I do, I'm a director. I think about how the concept, positioning a product, timing, location, and customer demand. And then I build something around that – everything from the color of the banquettes to the music, to the lighting, to the mood, to the food, to the plateware, to the wine list. Everything should be coming back to some central idea. And unfortunately, most restaurateurs don't do that. They hire a chef, they hire a designer. They trust their sommelier...

CNS: Are you a control freak, John?

No. I'm an ultra control freak. So, on my resume, it says "a practically passionate perfectionist." I like people to put their hearts into things. I get very upset when I know someone has the potential and doesn't realize it.

CNS: Do you think attitudes toward chefs are changing in China? Do you think they are starting to get more of the respect they deserve?

I think young people increasingly don't care what their parents think about their career choices. And I think it's a good thing. Gone are the days when you have to work at Microsoft just to please your parents. I think the biggest problem right now is that chefs don't get rich enough. That's why the parents don't respect them. But if you're bringing home the bacon, it doesn't matter.

CNS: What kind of food trends do you think should die at this point? Any gimmicks out there you think should end?

I don't know. Where is the line between gimmicky and interesting? If the product is good and the elements are thoughtful, and it tastes good, then that's really all that matters. Right? So, I don't think there are bad food trends if you're doing what you do well.

CNS: Where do you eat when you're not in one of your restaurants?

I love to go to omakase sushi restaurants. I like to enjoy them by myself. I know I shouldn't, but it's great. When I'm with friends, we go to Xin Rong Ji and the Fu (1039, 1088, 1015) restaurants. I love going to Koreatown or Gubei for barbecue, too.

CNS: Any other projects on the horizon?

I'm very sick of opening restaurants. Not because I don't love it. I do love it. But the risk-versus-reward ratio for me to open another Coquille doesn't make sense. If I think about where my passion and my uniqueness lie, it's my ability to very, very quickly have interesting solutions to very difficult problems. Like all my life, I've done consulting, you know, whether it's advertising or software or whatever.

But I would say I would like to do more hospitality and real estate development projects. Because every single time a real estate guy comes to me, they want me to open a restaurant, I don't want to open a restaurant. I want to help them plan. I want to direct larger-scale consumer projects. But all of that is dependent on luck and life.

Having said that, there are a lot of other avenues that I'm looking at. I would love to find some crazy, stupid, rich people to give me money to build awesome restaurants that change the landscape of China.

If you go

Coquille 壳里西餐厅

Opening hours: 5-9:30pm (Monday-Friday); 11am-2pm, 5-9:30pm (Weekends)

Tel: 178-2112-9777

Address: 29-31 Mengzi Rd, near Xujiahui Rd

Average price: 858 yuan/per person

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