Mum and son top bestseller list with Chinese recipes

**Mum and son top bestseller list with Chinese recipes**

Chin Taylor says: "Mum is brilliant in real life. People love her, so I thought it would be good if we did videos"

A mother and son who started sharing cooking videos on social media nearly 10 years ago have now reached the top of a bestseller list with their new cookbook.

Choo and Chin Taylor, from Minehead, Somerset, focus on South East Asian cuisine. They posted their first video in 2017, after their takeaway business experienced a drop in trade during the winter months.

Since then, they have built up three million followers across TikTok and YouTube and attracted the attention of a major publishing company, leading to the publication of *The Ultimate Chinese Takeaway Bible*.

The book quickly became a Sunday Times bestseller, and the pair now hope to land their own TV cooking show and open a chain of fast-food outlets.

Choo said: "It's incredible to reach this milestone. It feels really good going from a takeaway to having our own book. I keep using the word 'amazing', that's in my vocabulary now."

The book will be released internationally in 2027

Chin says he is a fifth-generation Chinese Malaysian chef, from a family that has operated street food stalls and restaurants for more than 120 years.

He grew up helping out in his auntie's Chinese takeaway in Watchet, spending much of his time there when he was not at school.

"It was my passion," he said. "Most takeaway kids I know aren't interested. They only help if they have to and then it's only on the counter.

"The work is massively hard with very little reward. It's often 16-hour days."

Speaking about working with her son, Choo said: "We've been doing it since he was young and we can talk about anything. We make a very good team."

The first YouTube video was made in the pair's home kitchen

Chin opened his first restaurant, Exmoor Cooking Company, with Choo in Porlock Weir in 2011. It later became Ziang's.

Several years later, he decided to try social media.

"It was a sweet and sour sauce video. We put it on YouTube and completely forgot about it," said Chin.

"Eleven months later, I checked up on it and found that it had received 60,000 views and the channel had 7,000 subscribers.

"We were both flabbergasted, it was all an accident."

He said he had to persuade his mum to appear in the first video, "mainly because she thought it would be a waste of time and no one would watch it".

"When she realised it had done well, she said, 'Let's make something happen'."

After that early success, the pair began filming regularly so viewers could learn how to make dishes such as chicken chow mein, fried rice, beef curry and crispy chilli beef at home.

Chin said: "We do traditional takeaway dishes, but we also dabble in the street food that Mum grew up making.

"I think we've done so well because people try our recipes and say it's better than their local."

After moving Ziang's from Porlock Weir to Minehead three years ago, the duo have recently shut their physical shop so they can focus entirely on their social media, which operates under the name Ziang's Food Workshop.

It is now one of Britain's biggest Chinese cookery channels.

"Having a takeaway is on hold for a while," said Choo. "I'm in no rush, I'd love to bring back a cookery school one day."

Containing 150 recipes, their book, published last month, immediately went to number one on the Sunday Times bestseller list in both the food and drink and non-fiction categories.

Chin said: "We're really, really proud of this book. There's no trickery - what's on the plate is what was actually cooked.

"Our success is all thanks to the viewers. They're very loyal."

Beyond the publishing side, Chin and Choo say they still do everything themselves.

"I don't sleep much," said Chin, "but I know it might not last forever."