I am glad I met Jake Johnson. If I hadn’t, I might never have known about “Spicy Sour Pickled Snakehead Fish Fillet,” which is the most delicious new dish I’ve tried.
Johnson is the general manager of the new Lao Sze Chuan at 5849 Poplar Avenue. He suggested some items to try, including my new favorite, which doesn’t actually include the head of a snake. “Snakehead” is a type of fish. Its head is the same shape as a water snake’s head. But his description got me. “A sautéed base made of fresh chilis, garlic, ginger, spring onions, and pickled mustard greens combined with a soft, delicate, fish stock. After it’s brought to a boil, rice vermicelli and thin sliced boneless fish filet are added to it.” It was out of this world.
In addition to his colorful descriptions of dishes at Lao Sze Chuan, Johnson’s stories about his travels in the culinary world were also amazing.
Johnson, 45, was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but moved to Memphis when he was young. Both his parents worked as high school teachers.
Johnson’s first restaurant job was cooking at the old Bahama Breeze when he was 18. The kitchen got to him in a good way. ”I like the grind — when you’re in the weeds and really pumping,” he says, adding, “and plates coming at you. And the tickets.” He recommends aspiring chefs “do high volume for a while. Be on the line slinging plates and knocking out dishes fast. It makes you a better chef.”
Johnson got a job as a pastry chef at a fine dining restaurant in Cookeville, Tennessee, when he was 19. “I learned a lot but it was a little bit over my head.” After returning to Memphis, Johnson worked at the old Zanzibar. “I really learned Mexican cuisine there. I learned from a lady from Tijuana.” He also worked at Hard Rock Cafe and Ruth’s Chris Steak House.
Spicy Sour Pickled Snakehead Fish Fillet
But working under chef/owner Cullen Kent at the old Cafe Society was a pivotal point in his career. “He was one of the chefs that formed my ideas about cooking early on,” he says. Kent was “put up or shut up” when it came to working in the kitchen. “He dogged me out a few times.”
But Kent also taught him techniques Johnson never forgot. Like how to properly sear a fish. “When you’re searing fish, you’ve got to get a good hard sear when you put it in the pan.” Otherwise, it “won’t let go of the pan.”
Johnson enrolled in the culinary program at Southwest Community College when he was 24. “I went through that program to get a little more credentials and learn more about it.”
After he married, Johnson and his wife, who is Cantonese but moved to Memphis when she was nine, decided to move to Hong Kong. He was supposed to go to work at the Hard Rock Cafe there, but then it closed the month before he arrived. So, Johnson found himself without a job.
He and his wife moved to Mui Wo, a little seaside town on the outer islands of Hong Kong. They lived there for a while with her aunts, who taught Johnson how to cook Asian food.
Johnson then got a job teaching “basic phonics, grammar, and reading” at a kindergarten in Hong Kong. “They offered me more money than I ever made,” he says, adding, “I was there for six and a half years. And then I kind of went up and up and I was vice principal of the school for a while.”
His wife also was teaching at the time, so the couple spent their paid vacations backpacking in Southeast Asia, Europe, India, and the Middle East. After meeting some people in Nepal who had a hemp factory, Johnson learned how to make hemp backpacks, guitar cases, and other items, which he began selling wholesale.
After seven years in Asia, they returned to the states and moved to Cookeville. “My grandmother was in cancer treatment. We stayed with them for a while to help out. They have a big farm, which is the farm where I l live right now.”
Even though they didn’t have jobs, Johnson and his wife eventually moved back to Hong Kong. Johnson thought, “We might as well travel and have fun and enjoy our life. We didn’t have a pot to piss in, but we knew people. I started back cooking.”
Johnson ran the kitchen at a Caribbean beach bar. He also learned how to cook Jamaican food from one of the owner’s relatives, who was from Trinidad.
He returned to teaching after their first child, a son, was born. Along the way, he learned how to make beef jerky. He thought it would be a good way to make money. He left his teaching job and rented a little place to house his food factory/restaurant.
He named his jerky business “Lantau Jerky” and sold beef jerky to convenience stores and “boutique grocery stores.” “Southside” was the name of his restaurant, where he sold soul food “meat and three” combinations, which included half roast chicken, fried fish, and burgers. Johnson also sold craft beer at the restaurant, which featured 200 hot wing flavors.
In late 2023 Johnson and his family decided to move to Nashville, Tennessee. “I sold the jerky concept to one guy and I sold the restaurant to another one.” He went into the catering business. “My sister is an event planner in Nashville,” he says, adding, “She introduced me to people who did catering there.”
Johnson began working at Lao Sze Chuan last January. It was a perfect fit. “I like the cuisine. When I was in Hong Kong, this is the Chinese cuisine I’d eat the most if I went out to eat because I like spicy stuff.”
In China, spice flavors range from “fragrant,” which is “warm, spicy, but never overpowering,” to “maala,” a spice made with Sze Chuan peppercorns and dry chilis that “makes your mouth tingle.”
Popular dishes include Ma Po Tofu, a “soft tofu in a rich spicy oil based sauce,” and dry chili chicken: “Fried cubed dark meat chicken tossed in an aromatic sauce of dried chilies and fragrant house-made chili oil.”
The Lao Sze Chuan menu also includes “traditional Chinese dishes for Americans. Some are pretty straightforward. Various adaptations of things like orange chicken.”
One thing they don’t have on the menu right now is something made with frogs, Johnson says. “Frog is my favorite food. If it’s on the menu, I’m having frog.” Sze Chuan “has some of the best presentation of frog in the culinary world. This is part of my country roots. But frog is everything good about chicken and everything good about fish put together. The flavor of chicken and the texture of fish. One of the world’s most perfect foods.”