Asia's traveling TV chef mulls his next move

Bobby Chinn foresees an automated food world with no place for celebrity cooks

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Chef Bobby Chinn sips from a bowl of laksa, a spicy noodle soup dish popular in Singapore's hawker centers. © Reuters

JOHN KRICH, Contributing writer

LISBON -- Bobby Chinn has been a rugby player, a financial analyst, a New York brokerage clerk, a shellfish importer, a busboy, a waiter and a stand-up comic. He is also one of the most recognizable media personalities in the culinary world, through his award-winning "World Asia Cafe" and "Bobby Chinn Cooks Asia" television series, both widely shown throughout the region.

In the words of the late American celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain: "Anything that Bobby Chinn doesn't know about Southeast Asian food isn't worth knowing." Right now, though, Chinn is considering how to redefine himself for a post-pandemic world in which he thinks the food scene may change dramatically. "Maybe, through my own search for equilibrium, I can help a wounded world find some equilibrium, too," he says.

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