Towards the end of the summer Shun-Bun Lee, owner of the New Loon Fung restaurant in London’s Chinatown, found himself lacking a dim sum chef for his six-strong team. But he knew what to do. He went up to the kitchen and started filling the prawn har gau dumplings himself. His son, Sunny, shows me a photograph of the compact Mr Lee, in smart collar and tie, putting to good use the dim sum skills he first learned in Hong Kong well over half a century ago. “My father is a bit of a legend among dim sum chefs in Chinatown,” Sunny says proudly.
It’s a lovely story, but the winner of our Lifetime Achievement Award has skills that extend far beyond the perfect pleating of a translucent seafood dumpling. They are qualities that also go far beyond his restaurant’s kitchen. He is one of the very last of that generation of Chinese restaurateurs to have arrived in London in the 1970s who is still in the business. In that time, he has become a leader and a source of advice to fellow members of Britain’s Chinese community, at first informally and for the last 13 years as chair of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce UK.
