College Junior Wins Gold in World Chefs Competition|世界名廚大賽 大三生奪中餐主菜金獎

Congratulations to a super young chef. The gold medal for the Chinese cuisine category of 2018 Philippine World Famous Chefs Competition goes to 20-year old Taiwanese Chen You-Peng. Chen is currently still a junior student from Hungkuang University's Department of Culinary Arts and Hotel Management. He decided to give the honor to his father, who has been a chef for 25 years and Chen's best teacher along his cooking journey.


Chen You-Peng is carefully controlling the time to make sure the steak is cooked to just the right degree. He's also very good at making dumplings. The 20-year old is still a junior student from Hungkuang University's Department of Culinary Arts and Hotel Management, however, his culinary skills is already quite impressive. He won gold at the Chinese cuisine category of 2018 Philippine World Famous Chefs Competition, which concluded at the end of August.

I want to thank my father for supporting me without saying much. He's been giving me a lot of space to do whatever I want to do.

The Chen family has been running a stir fry shop in Yunlin County's Douliu City for 25 years. He's been helping out in the family business since he was small, and his father has been his teacher. Due to long-term occupational injury, Chen's father could no longer raise his arm very high. Chen feels bad for his father and has decided to honor him with his gold medal. He said it was thanks to his dad, who was the best possible teacher he could have asked, that he could win in the competition.

Of course I'm really happy. But I also hope that he keeps on learning since he's career has just started, and that he doesn't know much yet. He needs to keep exploring.

Chen said that he comes from a poor family and that he often needs to find ways to scrimp and minimize the cost of practice. He goes to the local fish market every morning at 3:30 to pick up fresh and cheap produce, and after a short nap, he goes out again to the Shalu District public market to gather other types of seasoning. Despite the hardship during practices, Chan said it was all worth it after winning gold.