There are times in life when the odds are against us, luck isn’t on our side and we are plunged into a dark, dark abyss. Crawling back to the surface can seem insurmountable but for the people who triumph over adversity, it is often testament to their strength of character. This is exactly what talented chef Jay Chang faced when things went south at his former eatery, Back Alley Pasta.
“That was, I think, probably the lowest that I have been in my career,” he says, reminiscing about that moment not too long ago when he left the eatery he helped build. Jay – as he is better known – says it was prayers and the support of his mother, fiancée, investors and the entire former team at Back Alley Pasta, who quit and followed him en masse, that emboldened him to open his latest venture Base Pasta Bar & Bistro in Bukit Jalil, Kuala Lumpur. “As cliche as it sounds, I prayed a lot.
And then, also a big part of it (coming out of the tough situation) was the responsibility I felt towards my team. “I tell everybody that this kind of thing – having the whole team follow you – is one in a million. So it was my responsibility from the start to get things started.
More important was the responsibility to look after my team because they made the biggest sacrifice. They could have gone anywhere else and got paid more, but they chose to stick around and open this place with me,” says Jay. When the chips were down, Jay’s team stuck by his side and together they built Base P.
