Ms. Theresa Lin The Top 100 Ambassador Award of Excellence recognizes outstanding individuals in the Chinese Restaurant industry whose has been contributing to the culinary culture exchange between the East and West, and promoting the industry segment to mainstream market in the U.S. This year we are honored to present this award to our very own host of tonight’s festivities, Ms. Theresa Lin.

Master Theresa Lin is a widely acclaimed ambassador of Chinese cuisine. Complimented as “The Julia child of Taiwan” by Director Ang Lee of Eat Drink Man Woman, Theresa Lin was born in Tainan, Taiwan, and graduated from Fu-Jen Catholic University.

She is broadly popular throughout the worldwide Chinese community as the author of 16 seminal cookbooks in Chinese, which are distributed generally throughout Asia and in Chinese-language bookstores around the world.

Her popularity became fame through her role as the executive food designer of the hit film Eat Drink Man Woman, which won an Oscar nomination as Best Foreign Film.

As the organizer of the Taipei food Festival for the Taiwan Tourism Bureau for 11 years, she was exposed to and became a friend of the greatest Chinese chefs of the world.

For many years a government-licensed chef herself, she taught cooking to potential chefs in government programs, won cooking competitions internationally (including 1st place in the cooking contest sponsored by Australian Meat and Livestock Corporation), and has been a well-known judge of cooking contests.

She moved to star billing as Hostess, food and cooking demonstrator, and food critic in television programs broadcast by Chineselanguage stations around the world. Among these programs were Good Morning, Taipei, Funny Mother, and the internationally popular The Gourmet World.

She is frequently invited abroad to demonstrate Chinese Cooking Art in many venues, including the Cannes Film Festival, the Academy Awards in Los Angeles, and I.T.B. Berlin, and is consecutively invited for three years to demonstrate in the Philadelphia Food Festival “The Book and The Cook,” and invited by Smithsonian to Washington DC in which she has won popular acclaim.

She has been retained as a food consultant for dozens of gourmet Chinese restaurants and food companies around the world, and her advice is invaluable in establishing menus that appeal to the discerning fanciers of fine foods, Chinese and international.

Now she has adopted a new course, which makes those knowledgeable in the field of Chinese gourmet cuisine open their eyes in excitement. She has committed to act as the spokesperson, in both Asia and in the United States, for Royal Star at the Venetian, created as America’s finest Hong Kong style Chinese restaurant in Las Vegas. As its onsultant, she gives the benefit of her vast knowledge to the kitchen and menu planning, directly involved to ensure that her goal will be reached—that Royal Star at the Venetian and has won the Best Chinese Restaurant Award in both years 2000 and 2001.

She hosts talk shows Eat Drink Man Woman (weekly) and What’s Cooking (daily) at KAZN AM 1300 radio station for 10 years in Los Angeles. In addition, she also hosts a cooking demonstration program on Power TV Cable Channel, Local TV Channel 18, and HK Jade Channel (TVB). She is the Board of Director of Cardinal Yu-Pin Foundation, a non-profit organization and dedicating her effort to take care of seniors in the assisted living. She has been dedicated herself in the Asian Community to help cultures exchanging and has been voluntarily as interpreter for asylum at the immigration court; also doing lots of charity fundraising for the Society.