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Max Gow demonstrating the making of Chinese dumplings, Foodways, 2014
Max Gow
Burlington, Massachusetts
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Max Gow has had an interest in cooking all of his life. He was born in Shandong Province, a coastal province of northern China. Eating rice is customary in southern China, but noodles and dumplings are characteristic of northern Chinese cuisine. Max recalls the importance of preparing and eating dumplings during Chinese New Year, "In northern China, most people were poor. You don't have meat. But a spring festival, Chinese New Year, it was so important that people celebrate this day with the most expensive food, the most coveted food, which was dumpling." Often, the entire family would get involved in making dumplings. The food memory of Max's own family making dumplings delights him -- preparing the dough, rolling the wrappers, chopping meat and vegetables, ginger and spices, the whole family all together, happy, running around talking. Different families from different areas have different styles, "Sometimes, when you see rows of dumplings, you can immediately tell where this was made."
Though he learned to cook at home, Max later picked up skills in cooking working at several restaurants while attending college in Xi'an and graduate school in the US. He is knowledgeable about a variety of Asian cuisines and experiments with fusion cooking. He and his wife are opening Max's Noodles, a restaurant in Billerica, in the Fall of 2014.
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