2006

Ming Tsai was an outstanding student at The Miami Valley School and spent hours cooking alongside his mother and father at their family-owned restaurant, Mandarin Kitchen, before entering Phillips Academy Andover. From there, Tsai earned a degree in mechanical engineering at Yale University and spent his junior summer at Le Cordon Blue cooking school in Paris. Upon graduation, Tsai trained in Paris and Osaka before earning a master’s degree in hotel administration and marketing at Cornell University. Tsai continued to learn varied styles of cuisine through work at restaurants in Chicago, Atlanta, San Francisco, and Santa Fe.

In 1998, Tsai opened Blue Ginger in Wellesley, Massachusetts. In its first year, Blue Ginger received three stars from the Boston Globe, was named Best New Restaurant by Boston Magazine, was nominated by the James Beard Foundation as Best New Restaurant 1998, and Tsai was honored as Chef of the Year 1998 by Esquire Magazine. The James Beard Foundation selected Tsai as 2002 Best Chef Northeast, and since 2002, the Zagat Restaurant Guide has rated Blue Ginger in the top five of Most Popular Boston Restaurants.

Tsai is a national spokesperson for the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network (FAAN). He is the host and executive producer of the public television cooking show Simply Ming, where he has garnered two Emmy nominations and received a CINE Golden Eagle Award.

In addition to his work on television, Tsai is the author of five cookbooks: Blue Ginger: East Meets West Cooking with Ming Tsai, Simply Ming, Ming’s Master Recipes, Simply Ming One-Pot Meals, and Simply Ming in Your Kitchen.

Tsai is a member of Common Threads, the Harvard School of Public Health’s Nutrition Round Table, Big Brothers Big Sisters, The Cam Neely Foundation, Family Reach Foundation and Squashbusters.