Shaw Thing: A chat with the stunning Claudia Shaw

Known for her impeccable sense of style, Claudia Shaw's elegant approach to fashion is reflectd in the way she cooks. She talks to Crave about her cookbooks and her culinary passion.

Words: P.Ramakrishnan

 

Interview is online here.

NOTES:

Crave hit newsstands earlier this year and I freakin' love this magazine and have recommended it to fellow foodies in the city with the sort of unadulterated passion that mostly emanates from me when there's food involved. 

Like most Indians, I spend an inordinate chunk of time in the day thinking about what to eat. Ergo, presto, pasta, proseco, food-wood for Crave. 

I've had the great joy of writing for Carmen Li, the editor-in-chief and publisher of Hong Kong's premier food mag too. Carmen and I hit SCMP around the same time when we were fresh out of University. I was chubby and foolish, she was (is!) alarmingly polished and erudite. The twain wrecks had to meet. 

The most notable memory I have is her working late into the night and arriving on time the next day in her fancy schmancy car. Why she worked that long and that hard for criminal pay (and made the rest of us look bad) when she should have been getting pedicures and being served canapes was beyond me. 

In my mind, she should have been the Asian equivalent of gossip girl but she worked her tail off like Ugly Betty. Oh look - strands of being a TV junkie are leaking into my prose now... sigh. 

Anyhoo, here we are a decade and then some later, and nothing's changed. 

She still works too hard and still looks too good. We're supposed to be a breed of boozy, overweight hacks that whinge all day at cheap bars over the declining standards of publishing. Li goes against the grain, she doesn't fit the prototype. 

Lots of ups and downs in the biz so when she nose-dived into this arena, that brave quixotic fool (carpe diem!), by launching this polished, glutinous glossy, I'm backing her 100 per cent. 

Putting my money where my blog is, I hobbled (twisted ankle - running. Er... running to a cab but it still counts as running/sports injury) across to Dymocks in Happy Valley to buy my own copy of the first few issues. 

 Its a delicious mag - I wanna spread some Nutella on it and eat it like a cracker. Great pics, informative writing, targeting a niche market, its gorgeous cover to cover, page by page. 

Can't read the text above? PICK UP July 2010 copy of Crave NOW! 

Post script: 

Interview is online here.