Chef by Chance: The Culinary Journey of Simone Thompson
Chef Simone Thompson is no stranger to the Beijing food industry. Having worked at the likes of the Hatchery and restaurants like Jing-A, she’s made an indelible mark on the capital. That being said, Thompson’s cooking career up to this point all boils down to one word: chance.
The Australian native had worked in her home country in hospitality since the age of 15, but it was a sudden whim that led her abroad. “I was studying a graphic design degree in uni, and I’d gotten three quarters of the way through and said to myself ‘I’m just gonna go to the UK for a year,’” she shares. That was 15 years ago.
Thompson has come a long way since that fateful choice, and though she halfheartedly admits she regrets not finishing that graphic design program, she’s managed to keep going and not look back. It helps that chances have kept coming since that initial decision: the chance to dive into cooking; the chance to move to Beijing; and, finally, the chance to embark on her latest endeavor, a project called Malo’s.
Thompson kicked off her cooking career after deciding to go to the UK for (what was supposed to be) a year
Malo’s – a small eatery next to Golden Weasel meant to cater events, as well – is a culmination of everything Thompson has gleaned from her work across the industry, but to get there, we must first go to Great Britain.
Despite having worked in hospitality before, Thompson stresses that she wasn’t interested in cooking as a career until she went to London. “My sister was also in London [when I went there] (all Australians go to London, for some reason)… and her boyfriend was working as a chef,” she explains. He’d opened a tapas bar with his friend and hired Thompson to work there, first as part of the wait staff, and then in the charcuterie section. “Then he was like, why don’t you do a shift in the kitchen? … and I did one shift in the kitchen, and I was hooked.”
Thompson worked at the restaurant for four years, going from menial kitchen tasks like chopping potatoes and onions to learning how to operate a charcoal grill to, in the end, executive chef. From there, it was on to a burger restaurant and a sherry bar opened by the same chef. This last experience gave Thompson a knack for drink and food pairings.
Working in a diverse variety of restaurants in London has greatly inspired Thompson's cooking in Beijing today
A jump from the burger restaurant and sherry bar to a series of gastropubs around the city resulted in the most significant takeaway in her development as a chef: the joy of slow cooking.
According to Thompson, “A lot of the old pubs I worked at had staff who … started out at St. John,” a mecca of the foodie world founded by the legendary chef and restaurateur Fergus Henderson and Trevor Gulliver. St. John is known for its no-frills, old-school methods and nose-to-tail cooking. “It’s like nothing that I’d ever seen before – it’s pretentious, don’t get me wrong – but it’s just simple stuff, simple fucking food.”
These old school techniques made a big impression on Thompson, especially at the Marksman, one of the later pubs where she worked. “They did their own charcuterie; they did everything ‘properly’ and slowly. They never used sous vide; they did everything in a traditional way.”
In Beijing, Thompson honed her craft thanks to work at the Hatchery
To this day, Thompson still adores slow cooking and pastry – another skill she acquired all those years ago – due to the process involved. It’s a love she carried with her on the next leg of her cooking journey in Beijing. For example, she’s made a major contribution to Jing-A in the form of their sourdough Neapolitan pizzas (more on that later), and the pastries, pies, small bites, dips, and pickles found on the ever-changing menus of Malo’s.
Beijing was another one of those chances Thompson took; she first came to China’s capital with an ex who said “let’s go there for a year and see what it’s like.” Thompson ended up staying, and then got to work at now-long-gone restaurant incubator the Hatchery, which helped foreign entrepreneurs open restaurants in Beijing as well as other parts of China.
“We didn’t really get many restaurants coming to us to open here,” Thompson admits, “so we just ended up doing our own regular rotating concepts,” working on things like Common Burger, Coop, and other vastly different ideas. Then, from the Hatchery, it was on to Jing-A and pizza.
In the capital, she's worked with everything from sandwiches...
“Alex Acker [Jing-A’s co-founder] was adamant about pizza,” Thompson laughs. “He said ‘let’s not stop at the best pizza in Beijing, let’s aim for the best pizza in the world!’” Thompson joined Jing-A in 2019 – an exciting time, according to her – when the company was just starting to expand; Longfusi was the branch where she kicked off her stint.
Being fresh off her time in London, where she had worked with pastry and dough, Thompson was up for the task. “I remember being pumped about it,” she says of the endeavor. The pizza oven was a bit of a learning curve, since churning out pizzas at the rate of one a minute or so at a time is the antithesis of slow cooking.
Working with a sourdough base was the first step towards making the pizzas at Jing-A something completely their own. The next was the toppings, something that Thompson really enjoyed.
...to crafting her own take on the world's most controversial pizza
She’s especially proud of the Laoganma Luau pizza, a take on the Hawaiian pizza with pork, pineapple, and the eponymous Guizhou chili sauce atop a barbecue sauce base. Funnily enough, Thompson says the barbecue base was seen as sacrilege by Hawaiian pizza lovers in Beijing, some of whom insisted tomato sauce be used.
Thompson disagrees, saying simply if it works, why stress keeping it traditional? “There are very few foods where Australians will say ‘no, you must do it this way,’” she explains. “So with a lot of the food I make, I usually just come in with the attitude of ‘why not?’”
After leaving Jing-A, she formed her own consulting company, FOODLE, with whom she consulted on a great many Beijing and China restaurants. Clients range from Side Street’s Jianguomen location to The Orchid and their restaurants.
At Malo's events, Thompson aims to keep things simple yet extraordinary
Thompson is happiest when working with clients who want to keep it small, and encourages them to do so. “In Beijing, you’ve gotta be careful regarding what food you go all in on,” she affirms, citing the need for chefs to consider the local palate, but also to think about what they want to cook and to embrace it fully. “You can shoot yourself in the foot here,” she adds, saying instead of striving to make the best of a kind of food people are familiar with, places should make something that people will really notice.
Drawing on all her past experience working in the gastropubs of London, trying to see if things could stick at the Hatchery, and experimenting with all kinds of pizza toppings at Jing-A, the biggest lesson Thompson has taken away from her work is to be aware of what customers want, but to take chances all the same. In her transparent words on local dining habits: “The biggest learning curve [here] is understanding people are more considerate about what food looks like rather than the taste… but that doesn’t mean food here is bad; it’s fucking delicious.”
Both Thompson and Malo's stand ready to take the Beijing dining scene by storm
Thompson aims to follow her own advice with Malo’s, bringing something different to the city, something local eaters and even some expats might not be used to, while ensuring that she puts her heart into making it the best thing they’ve ever tasted. Whether or not the concept of Malo’s will resonate with everyone isn’t yet clear, but Thompson is up to the challenge. She’s no stranger to taking chances or to enriching the culinary scene of Beijing in ways its residents never saw coming.
If you’d like to get in touch with Malo’s for catering, private dinners, and special events, as well as weekly orders via the eatery's WeChat group, you can contact Thompson via her WeChat (ID: SLThompson12345). You can also find Malo’s on Instagram @malosbeijing
Malo’s
8 Huayuan Hutong (next to Golden Weasel), Dongcheng District
东城区花园胡同8号院(醉鼠酒吧旁边)
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Images: Uni You, courtesy of Simone Thompson and Golden Weasel