Bridge Builders:
Dave J Critchley

Not everyone gets to follow their initial employment dream, but it doesn't always end badly. 

Tony Blair wanted to get into the music business, as a promoter or preferably a star, but had to settle for the harsher spotlight of politics – and led his party to win three successive UK general elections. Jimmy Stewart studied architecture, but the Great Depression forced him into acting – and a much-loved, Oscar-winning Hollywood career. 

Many a young hopeful has had to overcome career disappointment, and Dave Critchley is another to add to the list. Born in the Liverpool suburb of Childwall, he's a typical son of his city: affable, approachable and confident… and with a strong artistic streak. The young Critchley saw art as his career.  

"I was studying art, design and illustration, and I went to college and then university to continue my studies," he tells CGTN. "By the time I finished my studies, I came out of university looking for a job specifically as an illustrator for children's books… but there weren't any jobs in the market at that moment."

Art can be a difficult career to break into – even Walt Disney was once fired by a newspaper editor, incredibly for lacking imagination and ideas – and Critchley was enough of a realist to know he couldn't wait forever. Besides, he already had a back-up plan, formed from an earlier determination to get busy. 

"As a young lad in school, I wanted a little bit of extra money just to help pay my way," he explains. "I went to my local pub and asked if they had any spare jobs going. And so at the age of 15, I was washing dishes at the local pub."

Critchley is far from the only teenager to have earned pocket money in the food-service industry. Around 50 kilometers south-east of Childwall, customers at Mandeville's bakery in Holmes Chapel might have been served by a pubescent Harry Styles. 

But whereas young master Styles was always determined to pursue his pop career – and along the way has served up his fans Watermelon Sugar, Kiwi, Grapejuice, Cherry and Music from a Sushi Restaurant – Critchley was relatively content to turn back from his first-choice 'artistic' career to filling people's bellies instead. 

"It was quite easy for me to drop back into kitchens and go full-time as a chef," he says. "I've been working in kitchens ever since. I never looked back – never managed to open that drawer and book again."

It's not something he regrets. "I've had an incredible time, really a great career, over the last 25 years since leaving university," he beams. "I just wanted to learn from the best, become the very best chef I could. I've worked in some of the top restaurants in the north of England, around Liverpool, Manchester – it's been fantastic."

As his fame has grown, so has his famous clientele. "Movie stars, football stars, a whole host of famous people I've cooked for," he recalls. "I still now get lots of A-listers and celebrities at my restaurant here in Liverpool. 

"When celebrities come to the city, they make a beeline for Lu Ban restaurant – it's got a great reputation," he says proudly. "Lu Ban has become a kind of standard of quality, so they know when they come to this restaurant, they're going to have a great experience."

And like the city of Liverpool itself, it's a great experience with a strong Chinese flavor.

It is a classic narrative that spans cultures: the Hero's Quest, usually to a far-off place, assisted by an older educator of apparently infinite wisdom. And if that sounds overly flowery, Critchley has his own description: "The most amazing part of my journey – The Chinese Food Odyssey, I like to call it."

Critchley was working in Manchester when he was asked to return to his hometown to help set up a new Chinese restaurant. "I thought, 'OK, I've not done Chinese food specifically before, it's something I'd like to learn a lot more about.'" 

His openness paid instant dividends as the project was laid out before him. "They wanted to fly me out to China, out to Tianjin, I would study with the chefs out there – this was incredible, this doesn't happen to a chef. 

"This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity: I get to fly out to China to experience the culture, experience the food and learn alongside some of the best chefs in the world. I absolutely jumped at the opportunity to learn, to see, to travel out to China. Incredible."

Wide-eyed and broad-minded, Critchley flew east in 2019, from London Heathrow to Tianjin. 

"When I first landed there, it was incredible – beautiful city, huge skyscrapers, amazing vista, this amazing river that runs through the center of the city," he says. "It reminded me a lot of Liverpool, although it was a lot bigger – lots of history of trade with the rest of the world and huge ties to Liverpool because of the trade routes. 

"I just fell in love with Tianjin immediately. Everything about it was just so beautiful, so exciting, so new. It was different, but also very familiar, which was really comforting. I felt at home straight away in Tianjin."

He was immediately plunged into city life. "I stayed in Tianjin for about three weeks – an incredible time for me, life-changing, opened my eyes to Chinese cuisine and beautiful Chinese culture. I spent some time at the college with Master Wu and the master chefs of Tianjin, learning dishes, experiencing new flavors, new techniques."

The much-revered Zhengxi Wu is a national-level master chef of China, and has overseen a select few as they enhance their Chinese culinary skills to reach master chef status from the Tianjin School of Cuisine.

Immersed in the culture

Critchley found himself on a whirlwind tour of Tianjin.

"I was taken all around the city to the best restaurants and the most incredible food I've ever eaten in my life," he says. "I was trying new things, seeing new things, and also trying to pick up as much of the language and culture as I could while I was there."

To this day, Critchley recalls one particular speciality encapsulating his instant immersion in the culinary culture. 

"The first dish I was taught by the master chefs was a five-flavor cucumber dish, and what really stood out was how simple but how amazing it was," he marvels. "We had all these different flavors going on and something so simple as a cucumber could produce these amazing flavors."

When Critchley smilingly says "I will never forget that dish," there's another reason – "I had to cook it live on Tianjin TV in front of 15 million people. It was a little bit scary," he laughs. 

"But I really enjoyed it and it epitomized what I learned in China about great ingredients, quality ingredients, seasonal ingredients and letting the flavor of the ingredients really come through. It was so simple and so effective, and I think that one dish will stay with me forever."

Clearly both apt and rapt, Critchley caught the attention himself. 

"My enthusiasm and my passion for those dishes and for the learning must have rubbed off on Master Wu as on my return to the UK, we received notice that Master Wu wanted to make me his final apprentice," he says. "This is a huge honor, something I never saw happening – we think I'm the first Westerner to ever receive this accolade. Probably my proudest moment in my career so far was being asked to be Master Wu's final apprentice."

With the notable exception of Jesus Christ, you don't get many restaurants named after carpenters. That said, to characterize Lu Ban as a carpenter is a bit like calling Shakespeare a keen writer. 

Born during the Zhou Dynasty two and a half millennia ago, Lu Ban came from a family of carpenters and expanded the family business by becoming a structural engineer, architect and inventor. He is credited with devising or improving the saw, the drill, the plane, the shovel and the set-square, not to mention a kite-like wooden bird and a mobile counterweighted siege ladder. 

No wonder a Chinese version of the English idiom 'teaching your grandmother to suck eggs' – offering unnecessary help to the experientially superior – is "brandishing your ax at Lu Ban's door." But what's he got to do with the restaurant trade? The answer, says Critchley, is not the medium but the method.

"We chose the name because Lu Ban was a master of his skills: When we refer to Lu Ban, we're talking about his method of education, his method of learning," he explains. "We have a picture of Lu Ban that looks across the kitchen: He's keeping his eye on us, making sure we're training correctly, making sure we're reaching our full potential. 

"We want to become masters of our skills. Our skill set is food, where Lu Ban was carpentry. But we feel the same passion – and the same methods that Lu Ban would have used all those years ago to train his apprentices, we can do the same here with ours. So Lu Ban is our figurehead, our inspiration."

Such a deep association with Chinese culture has not gone unnoticed. "The food here has been received really well – I'm very grateful to say that the Chinese community here welcomed us once they knew our story, once we said, 'Please come and try this restaurant, this is for you as much as for everybody else in the city.' 

"And the local community has also really embraced what we're doing  – they love this new style of Chinese food. It's healthy, it's fresh, it's exciting, it's modern, and it really celebrates the best of local British produce, but served with that Chinese master chef flair and attention to detail that I saw in China."

Try some, buy some

Introducing that authentic style to a city with its own long-entrenched view of a certain Chineseness required Critchley to frequently bite his tongue. 

"What I had to bring was something new, a new set of ingredients, a new way of cooking that they hadn't seen before," he recalls. "We did face a lot of people at the beginning who didn't think what we were doing was Chinese food – everyone was telling me it was 'fusion food.' I had to just smile."

It led to some pained conversations with customers. "I was like, 'Are you enjoying what you're eating?' To which the answer was always 'Yes – it's not Chinese food, but this is brilliant, it's lovely, it's fantastic.' And I knew inside this is Chinese food – this is the China that I saw, this is the China that I'm learning, this is a China that I'm passionate about. 

"I'm not here to argue with customers, I'm just happy that they're enjoying the food and I'm slowly changing the mindset. The more people hear about my story and what I'm doing and the training I'm undertaking, the more people kind of understand what I'm about."

There's also an element of public education going on: having worked so hard to bring such a variety of dishes to the table, Critchley would be understandably disappointed if customers timidly stuck to what they know. 

"I like to recommend that our guests have a good look through the menu, try something they might not recognize or they might never have tried before," he says. 

"Our guests can speak to me, they can speak to our servers – our servers are all trained in what the dishes taste like, what the story is behind it. I need my team to know everything that I know about China, that's the only way it works here. The education can pass through me to my staff, to the guests, and hopefully the guests then pass it on to other people as well. We've got this big spread of knowledge, of education, of learning."

It's a worthy aim, but if Critchley were to suggest a suitable dish to a first-time (and increasingly hungry) visitor, what would it be?

"All our dishes, I like to feel, are accessible to everybody," he says, but "I'd like to think we do have some signature dishes. The five-flavor cucumber I talked about before is a lovely dish, one that everyone should try at least once to experience what I experienced. 

"Our hot and sour soup – very powerful, but also very balanced, beautiful, very healthy, very different to what people have experienced elsewhere with hot and sour soup."

He continues to read the menu, to a growing chorus of rumbling stomachs. "The duck and pancakes, we serve with these little spices that I got served out in China with a little story behind each one – why we add the brown sugar to the fatty meats, because of the texture but it also sweetens the meat. And then we have a salty dressing and also a spicy one as well. And it all just I think those little stories, those little attention to detail is what sets us apart."

But while every individual's taste may differ, Critchley has a simple plea: "Go wild. Try it. Try something new. Every time you come here, try a different dish because you'll be surprised."

Changing the paradigm

Understandably proud of changing tastes for what is served on the tables, Critchley has another improvement mission – for those who toil behind the scenes. 

For many people, chefs have cultivated notoriety as bullying, cruel bosses. Perhaps encouraged by a sense of their own importance, and supercharged by the presence of reality-show cameras demanding heightened drama, many of the most famous names among showbiz chefs have adopted a poisonously posturing style: bellowing at underlings, creating a culture of fear, and generally pandering to the dangerous idea that only those about to explode from stress can possibly be doing their job properly, rather than demonstrating to all concerned the sort of low emotional intelligence and despised management style that inevitably leads to huge staff churn. It's a destructively unsympathetic, collectively exhausting paradigm that Critchley can't wait to change. 

"In the UK, the hospitality scene, specifically in kitchens, has always been a stressful, hostile environment for people working there," he says. "This was something I learned straight away from the age of 15 as a young chef and kitchen porter – and I wanted to make a change. 

"So when I became a head chef, I wanted to see a shift in culture. I wanted to see people who wanted to work there – that felt safe, that felt happy working there. My experience in China, the kitchens I saw, it was calm. It was busy, but it was calm, it was respectful, it was quiet. 

"It was exactly the same philosophy that I had been building for years in the UK. The kitchens and the restaurants that I run have a very different culture, a calm, peaceful culture. It's a stressful job already for my chefs – they work 12 hours, 14 hours a day sometimes, and you want to create a nice environment for them to work in a peaceful, happy environment."

For Critchley, it's a mutually supportive, organically improving situation rather than one built on fear and suspicion. 

"I feel you get the most out of your chefs if they feel comfortable, they feel happy, and they're learning and they're enjoying learning at the same time. The kitchens I saw in China, although very well run, very regimental, very impressive, were still calm and relaxed and peaceful as well. There's a lot of similarities between the kitchen culture over in China and what I'm doing here in the UK."

It's said that a career becomes a vocation when it's something you love, and Critchley has always enjoyed his food. 

"From a child, I always had a big appetite," he smiles. "I used to go to my friends' houses and the parents there would call me Jaws because I'd eat so much, I'd never leave anything on the plate.

"I used to love watching my mum and dad cook the Sunday roast – I'd be trying to pick away at the bone marrow and steal bits of the meat before it was ready."

His home city's assimilated cuisine was also inspirational. "When we used to go to the Chinese restaurant, for example, I used to love all the different flavors and never wanted them to end – at the end of the meal I was always sad, even though I couldn't fit anything else in! 

"I was always very interested and passionate about food – certainly eating it. It was only in later life that I would discover my passion for creating that food and learning about the ingredients and understanding the processes."

He also began to understand the societal symbolism of the world's table manners: how the humble but vital action of eating can form the cornerstone of a culture, even if it differs from place to place.

"Food philosophy between the East and the West is very different, specifically UK to China. I found the Chinese philosophy around the dinner table so beautiful, so elegant.

"What I found fascinating was how important the dining table was in the Chinese culture: meetings around the dinner table, family gatherings around the dinner table, everything revolves around this amazing food culture."

It's a way of life that Critchley recognized from his youth but sees as endangered in current UK culture – much to his chagrin. "It's something that we've just lost here in the UK, it's not as important any more to us, and it's something that I'd love to see come back again."

Food isn't just fuel

Critchley sees food not just as fuel for the body, but communion for society. 

"It's this more community aspect – it's sharing, it's passing it round," he says of table-time in China. "And the culture behind every dish is just mind-blowing, it's so beautiful to see. Here, food serves a purpose. It fills you up, you eat your food and off you go again into 'life.' 

"Whereas the Chinese philosophy is far more about enjoying company, spending time together, celebrating the food – this beautiful produce, which is really well-respected by everyone around the table. And the manners and the mannerisms reflect that – the way the fish is facing the head of the table – everything like that, it's so beautiful to see. 

"Over here, we've got a lot to learn about culture around the table, I think. It'd be lovely to see more of that integrated into our lives."

Nevertheless, Critchley sees food as potentially unifying rather than divisive: an illuminating way into other mindsets.

"I think food is an incredible way of bringing different cultures together," he enthuses. "No matter where we're from around the world, a good meal – we talk about it for days afterwards, it's so important. 

"Medicine and food goes together in Chinese culture; the culture also goes with it," he says. "I've learned an incredible amount about Chinese culture from just being sat at the dinner table with the people around me – all the stories behind why we eat this first and why we eat these dumplings at this time and why we eat spring rolls at the start of the festival.

"If we were to sit at the Chinese dinner table with all this incredible food and the stories and the culture, we could learn so much from each other – and maybe a Chinese family sat around a British dinner table with our roast dinner. There's a lot to be learned through food."