I wanted to learn as much in my early career. As with any career, you just want to absorb as much as you can. You just put yourself in those situations to just learn. And whatever it is, people are like, you’re crazy, why would you move to Malaysia and live in a room with three other people just to learn how to cook.

For me, I saw the value of the knowledge that I would acquire. I’m at a time in my career that I was able to do that and experience that and I’m just trying to take everything in. I think that’s the special part. I would probably never get this chance again to experience this.

And it’s not just about your food, you also meet different people in different cultures, but it’s also, how do I get better? I didn’t know anything about this cuisine and I wanted to learn about it.

In order to learn, you must fully immerse yourself in those situations, in those places to absorb as much as you can. For me, that’s the biggest takeaway. And nobody can take that away from me. That experience, that skill, whatever you learn, it’s yours.

Being able to travel and being able to be exposed to so many things at different levels. You just got to put yourself out there. If there’s something you really want to go to aspire to try, you just have to try.

At the end of the day, are you going to be in the same position that you were in. If it is, then it can’t be worse than when I started. So I might as well just try. At the end of the day, I just go back home.

I was able to travel to Japan, Thailand, Malaysia, and then back to the U.S. and New York to work for all these amazing chefs that I wanted to aspire to be and learn from. And I think that really helped to hone my skill, not only as a chef, but also as a leader. And then being able to see the things that I wanted to learn and take and also not so good things as well. And then be able to create this small portfolio of things of how I wanted to have my own dream restaurant.

Often, people would ask us, “How do you do this so fast? How did it become so quick?”

It wasn’t overnight. It was almost a decade of learning and seeing and experiencing things. And just being able to understand that now I kind of have all this information and knowledge, how do we put it into something that’s like Dearborn or Chris and then being able to express that and share it with people.

We’re fortunate that the community and people really love it. As long as people love it and people are enjoying it, I’m just going to continue going.

The biggest thing for chefs is being patient, but also you have to be resilient and you have to be hungry.

You have to be hungry in the same way with passion, with your career, with your skill. Whatever you want, you need to have that fire.

I always thought that I need to be the best. I need to work harder because there’s always somebody else that’s behind you or somebody’s going to come and chase you. So I always have this small pressure and I think it’s good to have this bit of pressure to make you want to grow. It puts you out of your comfort zone and just be a little bit uncomfortable.

Then also you have to be resilient. You want to see where your goal is and think about how are we going to get there.

And instead of trying to get there fast, you have to put small markers and goals that are tangible, that you can reach because then it feels more achievable. Rather than just wanting to get there at the end, and not really seeing a clear line of how to get there.

When you have these small goals that you set for yourself and you are constantly hitting them, you feel you get more confidence and you feel like whatever that was, your goal was, it feels more achievable.