Made With Lau is an American YouTube channel that makes videos about how to cook Cantonese dishes. It features the Cantonese cooking of the Taishan-born Chung Sun Lau (known as Daddy Lau), who had more than 50 years of experience as a chef.
His son, Randy Lau, conceived of the channel after both he and his parents lost their main sources of income during the COVID-19 pandemic. Randy, who grew up in California, had a language barrier with his father, who spoke Cantonese. He viewed the channel as a way to become closer to his father and preserve the Cantonese culture for his children. Released September 1, 2020, Made With Lau's first video was about how to make mapo tofu. Each video generally discusses how to make a dish and its history and ends with three generations of the family eating the dish together. In the videos, Randy's mother, Jenny Lau (known as Mommy Lau), shares about what it was like living in China and answers viewers' questions. Daddy Lau speaks in Cantonese while he cooks, and the videos include Chinese and English subtitles as Randy did not want to dub over his father's voice. In their video about egg foo young, the channel discussed how Chinese people in the United States have been discriminated against.
Beginning after the 2021 Chinese New Year, the channel started receiving millions of views on average every month compared to 100,000 previously. By October 2021, it was making about $50,000 monthly through YouTube ad revenue. In December of that year, it reached half a million subscribers, and in December the following year, it reached one million subscribers. Made With Lau teaches viewers how to make Cantonese dishes such as egg drop soup, hot and sour soup, tangyuan soup, congee, Chinese steamed eggs, rainbow chicken vegetable stir fry, chow mein, chow fun, ginger egg fried rice, zongzi, Kung Pao chicken, and char siu.
Background
Chung Sun, who is known as Daddy Lau, was born in 1945 in the Guangdong city of Taishan. When he was 12 years old, his parents left him behind, immigrating to Hong Kong with his younger siblings to flee from the Chinese Communist Party. As a descendant of restaurateurs, he took cooking school classes in Guangzhou. In China, he became acquainted with Jenny Lau (known as Mommy Lau), who was born in Guangzhou and would become his wife. Chung Sun immigrated to New York in 1981, and Jenny immigrated in 1982 soon after their marriage. The couple have two children, Jennifer (Jenny) and Randy, who grew up in California.
Chung Sun and Jenny owned Wah Yuen, a Chinese restaurant in Concord, California, that could serve between 60 and 80 customers at a time. Their son, Randy, and his older sister would often eat the restaurant's hot and sour soup and talk to customers. When Randy was around six years old, a fire destroyed the restaurant. To free up time to be with their children, the couple decided to stop operating the restaurant. Jenny returned to being a nurse, her former occupation in Guangzhou, while Chung Sun was employed at several Chinese restaurants as a chef over the years. Chung Sun has been a Chinese food chef for over 50 years. Randy said about his experience as a youth in the San Francisco Bay Area, "I was one of the only Asian kids in school. I didn't feel Asian enough or American enough, I was not fluent in Chinese and I did not feel American as a kid."
History
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Chung Sun and Jenny Lau's restaurant closed. Owing to the COVID-19 shutdowns, Randy Lau lost his business, which had been his primary income stream. The family had to rely on unemployment benefits and savings. At the time, Randy's wife was six months into her pregnancy, and he wanted to assist his parents to make a comeback. During a March 2020 weekend retreat with his wife, Randy conceived the idea of filming his father making Cantonese dishes. He had gone through an activity from the self-help book Designing Your Life that asked, "What would you do if money was not an issue and you would not get judged?" Having previously done work in digital marketing, he decided he wanted to pursue a path of making videos with his parents. In a two-hour conversation, Randy shared his proposal to create YouTube videos with his parents. After he described how YouTube videos could generate revenue for them, his mother was supportive, but he did not know what his father, who remained silent, thought. One day later, his father said in a phone call, "Hey, I defrosted some pork. You want to come and film?" Remaining at home in the San Francisco Bay Area during the pandemic, Randy created the YouTube cooking channel Made with Lau.