Harley Spiller

The author of “Chow Fun City: Three Centuries of Chinese Cuisine in New York City” for Gastropolis, the new Columbia University Press book, Harley Spiller serves as associate editor and reporter for Flavor and Fortune, the Chinese gourmet quarterly. His work with Chinese food has been the subject of a dozen articles in The New York Times, and featured widely in media like The Wall Street Journal, The New Yorker's “Talk of the Town,” CNN Headline News, NPR, The Learning Channel, even “To Tell The Truth.” He has cooked alongside Rudolph Stanish, the Omelet King; teaches Chinese cooking at CUNY Kingsborough; and lectured at the Asia Society’s “Dim Sum and Then Some” with fellow panelists Jean-Georges Vongerichten, Handel Lee, Mimi Sheraton, Michael Tong, Patricia Yeo, and others. In the early 1980s, Harley Spiller learned how to cook home-style food at the side of Yet Gum Pei, a professional chef from Ding Hey in China’s Zhoushan Archipelago, and his wife, who was an even better cook. He has been studying Chinese cuisine on a daily basis ever since. Mr. Spiller’s passion for cuisine is exemplified by his personal collection of over 10,000 Chinese restaurant menus and related memorabilia dating back to the 19th century. Museum exhibitions of his collections of menus, spoons, and other food-related artifacts have been held at The Smithsonian Institution’s Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum; The New York Historical Society, The Museum of Chinese in the Americas; El Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela, and elsewhere. For Harley Spiller, New York City is a savage and addicting assault on the senses, not unlike a plate of blazing plate of Hunanese Chicken with Hot Pepper and Peanuts – join him on his tours of The Big Apple’s five Chinatowns and catch the fever!