The
James Beard Foundation Awards
May 6, 2002
Ming Tsai: Best Chef Northeast
Chefs who have set
new or consistent standards of excellence in their respective
regions. Chefs may be from any kind of dining establishment
and must have been a working chef for at least five years. The
three most recent years must have been spent in the region where the
chef is presently working.
Zagat
Restaurant Survey:
Boston 2002 - 2007
Blue Ginger, 2nd Most Popular Restaurant
“Rising above
the fusion fray, chef-owner Ming Tsai sets the standard for
East-meets-West cuisine with a transcendent menu that more than
lives up to the buzz; no wonder its immensely challenging to get a
reservation - even diners from Boston do the reverse commute to this
sleek suburban phenomenon where it's so perpetually packed
wall-to-wall, that you may have to beg to be waited on; though
skeptics insist that in LA, it'd be no big deal, plenty of groupies
only hope that the Ming dynasty continues to reign in
Wellesley."
Boston
Magazine:
The Best of Boston 1998 Restaurant,
New Suburban
Blue Ginger
“Asian-influenced
fusion cuisine has made it to the suburbs. This time around, it is
being done with intelligence, restraint, and style, in this case by
Ming Tsai, a Yale-educated, French-trained Chinese chef who was a
pacesetter in San Francisco and Santa Fe before coming East. Star of
a 40-part series on the TV Food Network, Tsai mixes Western (mainly
French) and Eastern (mostly Chinese, with a little Japanese thrown
in). The resulting dishes, like the fabulous Long Island duck breast
marinated with achiote pepper, candied ginger, thyme and garlic,
should be enough to get even the most devoted urbanite to venture
out to Wellesley. “
Esquire
Magazine
The Best New Restaurants of 1998
Ming Tsai of Blue Ginger
Chef of the Year
By John
Mariani
“My palate had
overdosed by the time I sat down at Blue Ginger. But then I ate chef
Ming Tsai’s tuna carpaccio with crispy rice cake and felt a
shimmer on the tongue. I followed it with his foie-gras-stuffed dim
sum in a caramelized-onion broth and there were signs of life in my
mouth. Then I had a sake-and-miso-marinated Chilean sea bass with a
kick of wasabi oil and my mouth was alive. I realized I was eating
food I’d never tasted before. I’d certainly eaten similar
dishes, and I was familiar with all the ingredients, like kaffir
lime and jasmine rice. But never had I seen them combined with such
savvy. At Blue Ginger, I enjoyed one of those meals that reminded me
how great chefs can refine ideas the way great musicians refine a
riff or interpret a sonata.”
