Far flung kitchens = classrooms for young chef

For Christopher Kong, spring 2010 began a year of living dangerously. It included months of grueling work bussing tables in an open-air dining room in Malaysia and prepping vegetables and sauces in the adjacent sweltering kitchen. It meant living and working with Nepalese and Bangladeshi contract-crews sleeping four on the floor; sharing a single bathroom with 20 men and no hot water; washing clothes by hand and drying his stained apron over Chinese steamer-baskets in the restaurant's kitchen.