‘Top Chef All-Stars’ Winner and ‘Cook Like a King’ Author Knew She Wanted to Be a Chef at Age 4

By Noma Faingold

Chef Melissa King was not like other kids growing up in Whittier, a small city in Los Angeles County. While her peers watched Saturday morning cartoons, she was glued to Julie Child shows, Martin Yan’s “Yan Can Cook” and other television cooking programs.

“I was always very interested in food, and I liked to eat,” King said.

The shy girl was one of two Asian students at a Christian elementary school. She got teased when she opened her lunchbox, which usually contained pungent Chinese food, leftover from the previous night’s family dinner, which King helped prepare.

“Part of me felt a little embarrassed,” she said.

King, 41, who won “Top Chef All-Stars” in 2020 (season 17) and placed fourth in season 12, knew she wanted to be a chef at age four. She stood on a stool, stir frying vegetables under her working mother’s supervision. She describes herself as her mother’s sous chef in those formative years.

“Honestly, my mother was not a great cook, but that was my time with her,” she said.

Both parents, first-generation immigrants from Hong Kong, were engineers and did not come home until 6 p.m. By age 12, her cooking prowess was starting to reveal itself.

“I had surpassed my mom in the kitchen. I was the one who was cooking dinner for our family,” King said.

In high school, King poured over cookbooks. She experimented with Italian and French cuisine.

“I was always tweaking and adjusting,” she said. “My brain was sort of viewing food through that lens.”

On Sept. 23, her debut cookbook, “Cook Like a King: Recipes from My California Chinese Kitchen,” will be released. The sublime coffee-table style book contains 120 recipes that cover refined versions of heritage dishes she learned growing up. Influences include her Culinary Institute of America (C.I.A.) training in New York, 12 years of working in mostly Michelin-star restaurants in San Francisco (including Campton Place and the Ritz Carlton Dining Room) and experiencing the rigorous Top Chef journey. They all led to a multi-faceted, flourishing career that has taken her around the world to create, collaborate and tackle adventures involving food.

It took more than four years for the Inner Sunset resident to complete the book. She has been simultaneously writing a memoir for the same publisher (Penguin Random House) to come out next year.

“I like to say this took me my whole life to write because it’s really dishes that go way back, like Lemongrass Cioppino, which I made for staff meals at restaurants,” King said. “There’s so much story and details that I put into it.”

The Lemongrass Cioppino pays homage to San Francisco history. Fishermen concocted the rustic, tomato-based, one-pot dish from the day’s catch. King’s interpretation adds some complexity by bringing Asian aromatics into the mix.

King wanted to enroll in culinary school right after she finished high school. Her parents strongly disagreed. She complied, earning a degree in cognitive science from UC Irvine, before attending the C.I.A.

“Looking back, the best decision I ever made was to go to college. But, at the time, I was quite resentful,” she said. “I felt like they didn’t understand me. There was a lot of that teen angst and rebellion. I’ve always been a person who never liked being told what to do. I’ve always enjoyed having the freedom to create as an artist.”

By 2015, she was ready for something other than the grind of working in restaurant kitchens. She had mentors she respected, like Ron Siegel at the Ritz Carlton. But some kitchens were toxic.

“It was a different landscape at the time. There was a lot of misogyny and abuse,” King said. “I’ve even had pans thrown at me.”

The “Top Chef,” journey changed the then-introverted King in every way. She found her voice as a chef and in the world.

She had been out as queer only to her immediate family and friends. Suddenly, she was out to a national audience.

“It also opened me up to a career beyond restaurants,” she said. “I realized the industry is so fragile. There are alternative ways to succeed, where you can still touch people’s lives through food, whether it’s with a book, TV shows or on social media platforms.”

Today, King seems like a complete natural in front of the camera. Her manner is inviting and sincere as the host of a food foraging show for National Geographic called “Tasting Wild.”

Her social media posts are engaging and carefree, such as one-minute cooking segments from her kitchen or visiting her favorite food hangouts in her neighborhood, like DamnFine Pizza, Andytown Coffee, Outerlands restaurant, Chinese barbeque spot Lam Hoa Thuan and the no-frills San Tung.

“I never get sick of them,” she said. “These are my comfort foods whenever I come back home from traveling.”

King was involved in every aspect of “Cook Like a King,” from what recipes to include, the food styling and the look. She selected who was on the creative team, including representation from LGBTQ+ and Asian communities.

She insisted that all recipes had to have full-bleed photos.

“I obsessed over this book. I’m a perfectionist. From the drips of oil to that little chive that needs to be moved over, I had my hands in every detail,” she said. “I’m such a visual person. I kept telling my publishers that this book needs to have a lot of pictures because I want to convey what’s in my head. I want people to be able to taste it when they look at it. I want the food in the photos to glisten.”

Other goals King had with the book is in taking the mystery out of advanced cooking techniques, as well as teaching readers how upgrading pantry ingredients – like oils, vinegars and salt – can elevate a dish.

“I want them to explore the Asian pantry flavors like black vinegar and miso because I want that to become people’s everyday pantry, because it’s my everyday pantry,” she said.

She devotes a significant portion of the book to her culinary origins by including home-style recipes, such as Shanghainese “lion’s head” meatballs, made with pork and simmered in a ginger chicken broth. It’s the only dish her father would make because it reminded him of Shanghai and his mother’s cooking.

King does remember that the smell of “lion’s head” meatballs alienated her from her young classmates at lunchtime.

“That’s why I had to put the recipe in the book,” she said. “I’m proud of who I am. I am Asian American. I am queer. I wouldn’t change any part of me.”

Melissa King is on a book tour for “Cook Like a King: Recipes from My California Chinese Kitchen,” being released on Sept. 23 (Penguin Random House, 272 pages, $40). She will make an appearance at the William Sonoma store in Palo Alto, 180 El Camino Real, Sept. 29 at 6 p.m. She will be in conversation with Michelle Tam at the San Francisco Jewish Community Center, 3200 California St., on Sept. 30, at 7 p.m. (Presented by Omnivore Books).Tickets: jccsf.org/event/melissa-king-cook-like-a-king.

To learn more about the book, visit penguinrandomhouse.com and search “Cook Like a King.”

Recipe reprinted with permission:

Lemongrass Cioppino

I had to pay homage to my city’s iconic seafood stew, cioppino. Italian immigrant fishermen working on San Francisco’s Fisherman’s Wharf in the late nineteenth century created this quick, one-pot dish from a base of simmered tomatoes, garlic, and white wine with contributions from the local catch—halibut, Dungeness crab, shrimp, and mussels. I bring in Asian aromatics like lemongrass, ginger, and lime leaves for an even more complex flavor. You can make the base the night before. The next day, bring it to a simmer before adding the freshest seafood available from your fishmonger. Level it up: Cooked Dungeness or king crab legs combined with the shrimp and fish make a delicious addition. 

Serves 4-6

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for finishing 

1 cup finely diced yellow onion 

½ cup finely diced fennel 

5 medium garlic cloves, minced

3 lemongrass stalks, trimmed and smashed 

1 by ½-inch knob ginger, peeled and thinly sliced 

Diamond Crystal kosher salt 

1 teaspoon fennel seeds, finely ground 

¼ teaspoon red chile flakes 

1 ½ cups full-bodied, dry white wine, such as Chardonnay 

A few sprigs thyme 

Finely ground black pepper

One 28-ounce can crushed tomatoes 

3 cups (24 ounces) clam juice 

5 fresh makrut lime leaves

1 dozen littleneck or Manila clams  

1 dozen mussels, cleaned and rinsed

1 pound boneless halibut or cod, cut into 1 ½-inch pieces 

½ pound large shrimp, peeled and deveined 

Two handfuls mixed cilantro and Thai basil leaves 

Chili oil from King’s Chili Crisp or store-bought Chinese chili oil 

Garlic Toast for serving 

1. Heat a large wide pot over medium-high heat for 1 minute. Add the oil and swirl to coat the pot. Add the onion, fresh fennel, garlic, lemongrass, ginger, and a generous pinch of salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened and translucent, 3 to 4 minutes. Stir in the ground fennel and chile flakes and cook until fragrant, about 10 seconds.
2. Stir in the wine, thyme, and a few turns of pepper and let it come to a simmer. Turn the heat down to cook at a moderate simmer until the liquid has reduced by half, about 3 minutes. Add the tomatoes and simmer, stirring occasionally, to reduce by half, about 6 minutes more. Add the clam juice and gently simmer, stirring occasionally, for 10 minutes, so the flavors can meld and concentrate. 
3. Add the lime leaves, nestle the clams and mussels in the liquid in a single layer, then cover the pot and cook over medium-high until the clams and mussels open, checking after 1 minute or so. The moment they open, quickly use tongs to transfer the clams and mussels to a large bowl. Discard any that haven’t opened after 6 minutes.
4. Reduce the heat to medium-low. Season the fish and shrimp with 1/2 teaspoon salt and a few turns of pepper. Add them to the broth, gently nestling them into the liquid if need be, and simmer until just cooked through, about 2 minutes. Gently stir in the clams and mussels, then turn off the heat. Season to taste with salt and pepper. 
5. Remove the lemongrass stalks, if you’d like. Sprinkle on the cilantro and Thai basil and add a drizzle of chili oil and olive oil. Serve immediately with the garlic toast.