Stephen Yan

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Stephen Yan (born in Hong Kong, then a British crown colony) was the host of the successful Canadian television cooking show Wok with Yan.

The Vancouver-based chef moved to Canada in the 1960s and owned two Chinese restaurants in Vancouver. His hit show was originally produced at CBOT in Ottawa from 1980 to 1995 and was syndicated in the United States and Asia. For over 15 years Stephen produced over 500 episodes of Wok with Yan. It airs in reruns today on Toronto's OMNI.2.

Stephen also has produced travel and variety shows called Wok's Up? for CBC, Yan's Wokking for BCTV, and several half-hour travel specials on Thailand, Hong Kong, Japan, Disneyworld, Malaysia, Singapore, and Fiji.

Yan's charismatic personality on his television show can be attributed to his spontaneous humour that included one-liners spoken with his trademark Cantonese accent or him playing with his food or cookware. He has appeared on Late Night with David Letterman, Good Morning America, Regis Philbin, and other shows from the United States to Australia.

A trademark of his was aprons that bore a different 'wok' pun every show. Some examples are:

Wok & Roll
Wokking My Baby Back Home
Danger, Men at Wok
Wok Around the Clock
Wok the Heck
You Are Wok You Eat
Wok Goes up Must Come Down
Wok's New, Pussycat?
Wokkey Night in Canada
Stuck Between a Wok and a Hard Place
Raiders of The Lost Wok

Yan was the author of bestselling cook books:

Vegetables the Chinese Way
Creative Carving
The Stephen Yan Seafood Wokbook
Wok with Yan Television Cookbook

Wok on the Wild Side and Wok Before You Run were cooking videotapes produced in the 1980s and distributed worldwide.

He is not related to Chinese American chef Martin Yan of the PBS series Yan Can Cook, Martin was an employee and had worked for Stephen Yan in the 1980s as demonstrator for Stephen's product.