Some have a hunger for adventure. Others have a taste for travel. Many like to put all their eggs into one basket. A select few have all of the above. DeAille Tam and her fiance Simon Wong are in this group. When time permits, they love nothing more than packing quickly and hitting the road. But they are not regular tourists. No sites for them, no selfies in front of buildings. Their destination is food-eating in restaurants and searching for new ingredients.

They want to learn more about local culture and history to better understand the cuisine they are sampling. One thing that excites the couple, who were born in Hong Kong and grew up in Canada, is that the same ingredient can be harvested in different seasons in various parts of China.

Unsurprisingly, food is their career and they are co-founders and chefs of the restaurant Obscura, which opened in November 2020 in Shanghai. Tam considers the restaurant as a platform to serve Chinese cuisine in their personal interpretations with contemporary cooking technique.

She says she hopes to bring each Chinese diner the authentic flavor of their home and showcase more of Chinese cuisine.

In February, Tam, 37, won the title of Asia's Best Female Chef 2021-an award presented by Asia's 50 Best Restaurants, which celebrates female chefs who have made a positive impact on the region's restaurant scene-becoming the first chef on the Chinese mainland to receive the honor.

The award was voted on by 300 experts from across the region. William Drew, director of content at Asia's 50 Best Restaurants, says that Tam is an enterprising cook whose creative flair, progressive approach and deep understanding of China's culinary traditions inspires the next generation.

Before this career milestone, Tam had already become the first female chef on the Chinese mainland to win a Michelin star in 2018 as the executive chef of Bo Shanghai.

She says she is humbled that many industry leaders, for whom she has much admiration, have followed her evolution in the industry and she hopes to be able to inspire others to pursue their passion.

Engineer to chef

At age 10, Tam moved with her family to Canada from Hong Kong. Her favorite childhood food was Hong Kong-style French toast that her father, who owned a restaurant, made for her. This was a delicious coronary-inducing culinary delight-two slices of deep-fried toast slathered with peanut butter and drowned in syrup.

When entering college, she originally wanted to be an architect, but in the end, she followed her family's advice and studied for a bachelor's degree in civil engineering. At the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, Canada, Tam took part in a work-study program and experienced various workplaces and fields of employment.

However, Tam realized that none of them gave her the same drive as when she cooked a meal or baked a cake for friends or family. From then on, her passion for cooking drove her on a gastronomic journey.

Tam took part in a culinary program at George Brown College in Toronto, after which she continued her studies in cooking. In the end, she obtained a postgraduate degree in Italian cuisine.

For Tam, at culinary school, the courses on nutrition, chemistry, or interaction of heat and proteins were like applying what she knew in science to something she liked in life. But, nonetheless, she had to learn and practice the basic cooking skills.

During her culinary study, Tam met Wong who, having taken a similar path to hers, found his passion in making food when he was studying his medical degree in college.

They fell in love and studied for three and a half years together at the culinary school.

"She sat in the front, always getting high marks, always paying attention, and I was the complete opposite," Wong recalls.

During their study, they used their time outside of class to work in different restaurants, which continued after they finished their postgraduate degrees in Italian cuisine.

After working in different styles of restaurants, Tam found her passion in fine dining. "You realize that food can be presented so beautifully, like a painting," she says.

At a charity event in Toronto, they met Alvin Leung, an iconic chef from Hong Kong, popular for his bold interpretations of modern Chinese cuisine.

Leung was the first Michelin-starred chef Tam had interacted with, which allowed her to discover a whole new culinary world in Asia, including new food concepts, flavor combinations and ingredients she never previously heard about.

After that, whenever Leung visited Toronto to cook, the couple volunteered to help.

Tam recalls that, after several years of working in restaurants in Toronto, they wanted to work for Leung, so they called, asked and he said yes.

In 2014, the couple moved to Hong Kong and worked at Bo Innovation under the tutelage of the Michelin-starred chef.

Leung helped Tam realize that, even though there are cultural differences between Chinese and Western cuisine, the techniques are just a different way of manipulating the ingredients.

In Tam's mind, cooking is an experiment-it's about trial and error, not mistake or failure, as there is always something to learn. All cooking techniques are a type of molecular manipulation of the ingredients.

That's how she perceives any new ingredient. Whether frying or steaming, she thinks about the change in the particles and proteins and how physics affects that. In her view, the balance of flavors is about chemistry.

Tam loves art as much as she loves science, so she views cooking as an artistic expression for chefs, like a painting or sculpture.

Route to Michelin

In 2016, the couple were appointed by Leung as the co-executive chefs to launch Bo Shanghai. Two years later, the restaurant was awarded a Michelin star.

Tam recalls that the award gave her a profound sense of relief.

She says the task seemed impossible, as there were many difficulties the couple faced-not only the language barrier, but also finding the right ingredients in a city in which they had never lived before.

The menu at Bo Shanghai is totally different to the one in Hong Kong, which means that Tam and Wong had to create recipes for each dish from scratch. It was challenging, but also fun for Tam.

Wong has the same viewpoint. "We don't see any of these things as problems, because at the end of the day, there are two of us, so we learned twice as much and we see twice as many things. If there is an area in which one of us is weak, the other may be strong, so we balance each other out," he says.

Wong says the couple always create new dishes together. "She's more artistically oriented than I am. That is something that a lot of chefs don't always have-that feminine touch,"Wong says, adding that he eats a lot more meat than Tam does, so his specialty is in sauces and protein.

Last year, the couple opened their own restaurant located inside the Tang Xiang Cultural Space, a villa that houses a private collection of ancient Chinese treasures.

According to Tam, the eatery's name is derived from the word "obscure" and their idea is vague and hard to grasp-a conceptual black hole, in that once you are sucked in, Tam wants to hold you there with food.

She says that she hopes to build a bridge which transfers the authentic flavors of a particular place to its diaspora in the city.

Tam thinks that, with food, people are always looking for something they can connect with, and there is always a special connection with the place they come from, so she wants her food to bring out that deep emotion in her diners.

At their restaurant, the servers will check the diners' flavor preferences after the first one or two dishes are finished, and the chefs will adjust accordingly.

Aiming for another Michelin star, Wong says what really interests them is the variety of Chinese cuisine and culture.

"Our goal is just to discover China and to learn more about this, and we could never finish learning about it all over a few generations. It's always exciting to learn about history and culture," Wong says.