Photo by George Mahe
A photo of chef Ying Jing Ma at the original Chef Ma's Chinese Gourmet at 2336 Woodson Road in Overland.
We’re not entirely sure, but we’d be willing to bet that the Hainan chicken is the only culinary revelation achieved in a former Taco Bell.
Two elements define all great Chinese cuisine, no matter the region or ingredients: 1. the hsiang, the essential fragrance of the dish, and 2. the hsien, the fundamental, natural flavors of the food itself. What arrived at the table of the fortunate patron who visited the original Chef Ma’s location, a former fast-food joint in Overland with ersatz adobe walls and tiled roof that were gloriously incongruent with the fare that the chef brought to life, was the essence of these two elements. It was rendered with the talent that marked so many of the joys that emerged from the kitchen of the late Ying Jing Ma.
For us, the cuisine's aroma was simultaneously exotic and deeply familiar and comforting. The textures and tastes beguiled, with the silky tenderness of the boiled chicken, the pungent bite of garlic and ginger in the sauce, the bright sunshine of rice that was the color of spring daffodils.
“Chef Ma,” as he was locally known, might be described as a liulang dachu, or “wandering chef"—a cook who traveled and gained expertise by working in a variety of places. He was unafraid to test his skills and enlarge them. From his early days as a cook in Hong Kong, Ma migrated to Malaysia, Singapore, and Hawaii before arriving in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The Mandarin House brought him to St. Louis, where he stayed until 2015, when he opened his own place. The restaurant was fairly humble, with only a few tables and a perfectly ordinary menu that included the expected beef and broccoli, fried rice, and General Tso's chicken. There must have been a hundred joints exactly like it in the region, but what distinguished the original Chef Ma’s Chinese Gourmet was a small whiteboard, nearly covered in Chinese characters, which described the “Gourmet” part.
There were other treasures, many of them more classic Chinese fare than the Hainan chicken. After all, Hainan is an island, the southernmost province in China, but the eponymous dish came from Chinese immigrants to Singapore who concocted the recipe the same way that other immigrants to the West created chop suey. Chef Ma picked up the recipe there, working for the Marriott chain, and perfected it as great chefs do, maintaining a fealty to the origins and giving it his own, indelible spin. If Hainan chicken had ever appeared in a Chinese restaurant before that, it was very likely just some adventurous cook’s yetu, or wild hare. It was the iconoclastic Ma who had the spirit to introduce it, along with other dishes unique on the scene at that time.
“Chicken and rice” cannot convey the magic that he put into that meal. Patrons would get a table and tell themselves this time it was the opportunity to try something else. And perhaps sometimes they would. Somehow, though, it was always back to Hainan chicken (pictured below), with its spectacularly velvet chicken breast and the bones still inside to add flavor, the explosion of garlic and chilies in the dip, the redolent rice.
Photography by Kevin A. Roberts
Like the rest of the menu, it was available when he moved to bigger digs, going from a former Taco Bell to a former Pizza Hut space. It was delightful, expressive in a way that only utter simplicity can be.
Chef Ma liked to tout his success as an “Iron Chef,” conveniently overlooking the fact that the contest in which he’d won the title was in Austin, Texas, and not on some international stage. Otherwise, he kept that spirit of a wandering master, of being a cloud by itself in the culinary skies. He was never aggrandizing. He never pontificated on the “art” of his trade for local publications. He did what he did with exquisite care and dedication. His food did all the talking. He did so until his recent death, at age 59, though he left a competent kitchen, which will carry on.
It’s odd to think of honoring the memory of an extraordinary man by eating. Like so many others, however, we will appreciate the Hainan chicken even more as we remember him.
