Celebrity Chef André Chiang Shares Insight into Food for SU Library’s Expo

On May 18^th, 2022, renowned chef André Chiang gave a talk about the essence of food both in Soochow’s Waishuangxi Campus and online to support the school library’s virtual book expo, drawing a capacity crowd including SU President Wei-Ta Pan, Vice President Wei-Liang Chao, Vice President Bau-Tscheng Dung, and former Representative to France Ching-Long Lu.

Chiang emphasized the importance of using local food or produce as well as understanding local weather, land, and seasonal ingredients. What matters is to bring out the original, simple and best flavor of each food instead of making complicated, dazzling and ornate cuisines.

Despite having lived in many different places around the world, Chiang chose to return to his homeland and settle in Yilan, and found it a pity that some wonderful local specialty dishes could have been more widely known. That’s why he is trying to use Yilan’s local foods, such as smoked salty duck, as a medium to link this northeastern town of Taiwan to the world and to make them more internationally recognized.

Chiang believes each piece of land has its unique flavor, and in the future he hopes to promote all kinds of amazing tastes of Taiwan to the world by making special chocolates that represent each town and city in Taiwan.