Hong Kong dim sum restaurant chain Tim Ho Wan has launched a nostalgic dim sum series with the help of 95-year-old veteran master Foo Shing.

The series recreates five different dim sum dishes built from the chef’s personal recipe records that have almost disappeared from Hong Kong menus, with small adjustments to cater to modern tastes.

“I met Chef Foo at a networking event,” says Cheung Yat-sing, Tim Ho Wan’s global product innovation director. “He told me he still kept his dim sum recipes, so I flew to Singapore to learn from him.”

Foo’s life has been an astonishing one.

Born in 1931 in Guangdong, he entered the kitchen as an apprentice in Hong Kong at the age of 13.

“It was a really tough life,” he recounts. “We would wake up at 2am to start work to make dim sum for breakfast that opened at 5am. We’d work all day, and even after we cleaned the kitchens, we still had to help the restaurant make food deliveries.

“We’d lay a board on top of the dim sum steaming baskets and sleep there, and we’d wake up at 2am and start all over again. Sometimes, we’d only get two hours of sleep a night.”