Inside the kitchen of food writer and television host Pay Chen
Stocked with exotic fruit, an epic chocolate drawer and stacks of cookbooks
Pay Chen, who appears as a food-and-travel guest host on daytime shows like Cityline and Breakfast Television, was born in Taiwan and raised in Beaver Bank, Nova Scotia. Her parents ran a stall at the Halifax Seaport Farmers’ Market, where they sold dumplings, buns and noodles. “My brother and I would tag along because my parents couldn’t afford a babysitter,” she says. Watching her parents work ignited Chen’s passion for spotlighting new Canadians, particularly those who dare to dive into the food industry, a field notorious for its long hours and razor-thin margins.
While her parents were beloved in Halifax for their mouth-watering dishes, Chen landed in Toronto in the mid-’90s with only enough kitchen skills to boil pasta and smother it in store-bought sauce. “My mom never taught us how to cook—and that was a deliberate choice,” Chen says. “My parents didn’t want us to follow in their footsteps. They never wanted us to work as hard as they did for so little.”
Today, Chen is an adept home cook and a better baker. She credits her hours spent watching the Food Network, particularly Anna Olson. Chen’s kitchen, in the King West condo she’s called home for the past six years, has a few quirks—like its too-narrow fridge. She vastly prefers it to her previous place, though, which had an oven so small it couldn’t fit a standard cookie sheet. Her current kitchen is equipped with a gas range, which she says is a chore to clean (she’d prefer an induction stovetop). In the warmer months, she does most of her meal prep on the balcony barbecue.
The extra-large kitchen island was custom-built by Chen’s friend Andrew Hachey, a designer for HGTV. It’s topped with Dekton (which doesn’t stain or scratch easily), and it’s where Chen filmed her at-home food segments throughout the pandemic.
As a car-free urbanite, Chen prefers to shop within walking or biking distance of her home. She makes frequent trips to Kensington, where she hits up Sanagan’s Meat Locker for meats and local condiments, Essence of Life Organics for dairy and eco-friendly cleaners, Cheese Magic for artisanal cheeses, and Blackbird for baked goods. Then she’ll head to Chinatown to check out the fresh produce at Hua Sheng and Kai Wei. Chen is also a regular at various farmers’ markets, typically visiting two a week. Her favourites are in St. Lawrence Market, Leslieville, Sorauren, Trinity Bellwoods and Dufferin Grove.
While Chen’s fridge is stuffed to bursting with made-in-Canada condiments (from SupiCucu, Heartbeat Hot Sauce Co., Abokichi, Tropic Thunders 168, Fresh and more), she also loves quality imported products—especially when it comes to cheese. “It’s good that I don’t have a car,” says Chen. “If I did, I’d probably be at Cheese Boutique every day, and Afrim would start charging me rent.”
Everything in this freezer drawer is made in Toronto. There’s Smoke Bloke gravlax, Loga’s Corner momos, heat-and-eat Ramen Raijin and Chen’s favourite Soma gelato flavour: almond toffee crunch. “A lot of gelato is just too sweet, but this one is rich and decadent, with a beautiful roasted almond flavour.”
The pantry is in keeping with the locavore trend. It’s stocked with Toronto-made mustard (Kozlik’s), jerk paste (Nerpy’s and Albert’s Real Jamaican Foods), fancy peanut butter (Mumgry), celeb-chef barbecue sauce (Matheson Food Company) and ginger-scallion seasoning (Hong Shing).
“I inherited my love of spice from my dad,” says Chen, who owns an assortment of chili oils and hot sauces. “But, honestly, half of these aren’t even that spicy. Nothing should be so fiery that it burns your tongue and you can’t taste your food. The best hot condiments add a layer of flavour.”
Chen recently collaborated with Zing, a Toronto-based company, to create her own sauce called Sacha-ish. It’s a nod to sacha sauce, a Scoville-packed Taiwanese condiment. She calls it her “instant flavour booster” and adds it to everything, including noodles (be they Chinese or Italian) and scrambled eggs.
When she eats out, Chen’s go-to spots are Casa Paco (for excellent paella and unparalleled service), Wonton Hut (for, according to Chen, the best dumplings in the city) and Kiin (for Nuit Regular, whom Chen thinks is a culinary magician). She’s also a big fan of the Singaporean spot Kiss My Pans (she advises everyone to order the carrot cake, which is neither a cake nor made with carrots), Dotty’s and Porzia’s.
She tries to balance the scales at home by whipping up hearty soups, salads and other wholesome stuff. But, from time to time, she likes to indulge. Case in point: she has a chocolate drawer crammed with over two dozen varieties. Cynthia Leung, the co-owner of Soma, recently chided Chen for hoarding chocolate that’s past its prime. (It seems last year’s Easter bunnies have overstayed their welcome and need to hop on out.) But Chen’s curiosity for new flavours outpaces her appetite for snacking, which means her stash is ever-expanding.
Chen’s current chocolate crush hails from Montreal. The dark chocolate–gianduja bar by Allo Simonne is sinfully smooth and delightfully decadent.
For premium mangoes and other exotic fruit, Chen orders from Fruter, an importer that works with farmers in Peru, Thailand, Vietnam, Colombia and Australia to deliver just-picked produce to homes in North America. She’s currently waiting on a shipment of snake fruit. The quantities are usually pretty large, so Chen splits the haul with friends.
Although she’s a talented baker, Chen prefers eating what other people make. Some of her favourite Toronto bakeries include Roselle (for cakes and madeleines), Barbershop Patisserie (for the lemon bichon), Geste (for classic French pastries with an Indian twist), Castle and Coal (for canelés) and Robinson Bread (for the white country loaf or the green onion swirl).
Publishing houses often send Chen cookbooks to review, so her condo is filled with stacks on just about every surface. Her favourites are those that delve deep into a specific cuisine to provide historical context and cultural insight, like food scholar Carolyn Phillips’s All Under Heaven: Recipes from the 35 Cuisines of China or Clarissa Wei’s Made in Taiwan: Recipes and Stories from the Island Nation.
Chen found this first-edition copy of Pei Mei’s Chinese Cook Book in her parents’ house. The recipes, by Fu Pei-mei (a Taiwanese television host who was a household name in the 1960s), are written in English and traditional Chinese.
Chen is a collector of many things, including Pyrex bowls. She also has a vintage Honest Ed’s poster on display.
There are only a few bottles of booze on this bar cart, but they’re all domestic: wine from Rosewood, whiskey from Newfoundland’s Signal Hill and a Polish spiced honey liqueur from BC’s Wayward Distillery. Chen doesn’t drink much at home, so most of this space is occupied by cookbooks, vintage cooking paraphernalia and a framed photo of her dad.
Since the pandemic, Chen has taken to regrowing her green onions from the stems. Come summer, she’ll cultivate everything from fiery hot peppers to Swiss chard to peas on her balcony garden.
Last year, Chen ventured farther afield and secured a plot at the Alex Wilson Community Garden. She says her carrots were a huge disappointment and her tomatoes often vanished before she could pick them, victims of either two- or four-legged thieves. However, her leafy greens thrived. “I donated most of the greens and herbs to the community fridge at 782 Adelaide Street West,” she says. It’s a spot where people can donate food for others to take home. “There’s a huge income gap in our city. This is a little way I can share what I have with my neighbours in need.”
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