It’s been a little more than a year since a small corner of Pontypridd Market became a focal point for the best Chinese and Korean food you can possibly eat in Wales and in that time, self-taught chef Janet Wei has had a hell of a year, which peaked when her homecooked favourites claimed her the title of Champion Streetfood at The British Street Food Awards last autumn.
We scheduled a catch-up with Janet, simply because her hard-work has seen her business go stratospheric over the past year and it’s a far cry from the early days of her Authentic Northern Chinese Restaurant when, in the midst of pandemic openings and closings, she confesses she was often lucky to take £20 a day.
Now, a little over six months after returning from Hull as street food champion, Janet reveals her tiny restaurant in the corner of the market is to close. But, don’t panic spicy honey chicken lovers, Janet is opening a bigger location just a few steps away from her original spot. The 39-year-old, who moved to Pontypridd with husband, Huw, is taking on the site of the former Pam’s Diner, a vibrant cafe with red window frames and murals of ’50s-style couples dancing on the wall.
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“Hopefully in four or five months we’ll finish off in there,” she explained as we sat down on a quite Tuesday morning in the original airy and open space – despite its size – with people popping by and regulars calling in keen to book tables. “It will have the minimum 40 covers, and a massive kitchen and we’ll have a proper bar area and it will open in the evenings.”
This is great news for fans of Janet – who learned her craft way back when growing up in the Yanbian area of China cooking for her siblings from the age of 10 – as right now you have to limit your visits to mid-week days off or, if you’re lucky, bag a table at a weekend lunchtime. The excitement of a bigger place where she can stretch her cooking muscles and hopefully display her take-home sauces, which she’s always wanted to just hasn’t had the space, is palpable.
Janet is a like a bottle of pop of enthusiasm and sheer energy for what she does. She talks in disbelief about the diners who have travelled from as far as Birmingham, Bristol and Manchester to come and try her food, which is a fusion of Korean and Chinese recipes, as well as Vietnamese, Malaysian and other Asian recipes she’s cultivated in her previous life as an airline and luxury hotel employee around the globe. It’s a world away from Ponty Market, but she’s grown her businesses there and it’s turned into something beyond her wildest dreams, so it will always hold a place in her heart.
(Image: WalesOnline/ Rob Browne)
“For the past three years this has been my home, I work minimum 11 hours every single day, my life is here,” she explained. “Once this place goes I’ll be very sad, I’ve got such a strong bond and my dream started here. Although I’m not very young anymore, it’ll never be too late to pursue your dream. If young people want to pursue their dream, do whatever you need to to prepare, work hard for funds, you just have to go for it.”
Working hard for that dream has definitely paid off for Janet, whose restaurant has been mostly full in the 15 months since she hit the headlines for her freshly-prepared, tasty and great quality dishes. Since then she’s been invited to the Street Food Awards Wales, then went on to the Britain-wide competition and she’s a favourite at street food pop-ups around Wales, but she attends those few and far between as she doesn’t like to close on a weekend, her busiest time with many regulars coming back for more.
She still can’t believe her national award success. “It is definitely a dream come true, going up to Hull was so intense, I had Michelin-starred chefs either side of me, and they’ve got 15,000, 20,000 Instagram followers, people were there just to visit them,” she said. “And the first day, nobody was trying me, but once they did they were bringing their family back for more. By the end I was having reviews saying ‘I wish Janet would have a restaurant in Hull’, it was lovely,” she admitted.
(Image: Janet Wei)
“I always love cooking and am passionate about cooking, but in the beginning I definitely lacked confidence. And you know, because I’ve never done anything like this, never went to culinary school, for me it is just pure passion. I love food and when I was recognised by the local people and then the competition, it gave me my self-confidence to improve the restaurant or improve my dishes more. I think I still have a long way to go.”
Those who’ve supported Janet’s restaurant will be under no illusion about how good her food is and she’s always keen to say she wants the best ingredients to make her dishes stand out – perhaps explaining why she’s collected these awards in the first place.
“We really try to use the best ingredients, organic beef for my special this week (Sichuan Mapo tofu with beef), for other beef dishes we only use Welsh beef and our pork, I get them from the butcher, Kevin, so I will tell him the kind of thing I want and he’ll do it and the taste you won’t believe, compared to the supermarket – it’s amazing,” said Janet, who you’ll soon be able to visit at the Forest Feastival in Merthyr Mawr, read more about that here.
With plans for the bigger restaurant, training up a new sous chef and hopefully connecting with the local catering college to welcome students for Chinese cookery lessons, Janet’s got a lot on her plate, but she still gets time to enjoy meals out, her favourites being a Middle Eastern restaurant on Cardiff’s City Road and she likes the Vietnamese restaurant, Pho, in the city centre.
Janet’s ethos for making the best food possible for her customers has certainly paid off as they return time and time again. She even reopened as restrictions lifted during lockdown even though it was still quiet as she wanted to be there for people.
She said: “At one point, oh my gosh, I sat here the whole day and nothing. People said ‘Janet, don’t even bother coming’. I said, no, I had to. Because if one person comes here, they remember me.”