It’s 2017, and Mark Singson is running late to one of the biggest meetings of his life. And the only person he can blame is Ryan Reynolds. 

Singson is on his way to Granville Island to cook for TV producers from the Food Network. They want him to audition for several shows, including Chopped and Top Chef Canada. But on his way there from downtown, he runs into trouble. It turns out, parts of Georgia Street are shut down. A blown-up truck is staged on the Granville Street Bridge. Whole areas of Vancouver are inaccessible. The reason? Fellow Vancouverite Reynolds and a giant film crew have taken over parts of the city to film Deadpool 2.

He ends up 30 minutes late for his audition.

When he arrives, Singson quickly shifts into game mode, telling the producers that he’s going to treat the experience like one of the Food Network’s cooking challenges. 

“I actually don’t know what I’m making today,” he tells them. And then he gets to work.

He teases his dynamic cooking style, showing off his favourite tool: a humble siphon. Chefs fill up these narrow metal canisters with things they want to aerate, such as cream—but Singson will put anything in them, from oils to herbs. For this audition, he uses the tool in seven ways.

It works: Singson is chosen to appear on Top Chef Canada season six (and comes in second place). Along the way, he’s dubbed a mad scientist and a magician in the kitchen by the show’s hardcore panel of judges.

Today, Singson contends that both at the audition and on the show, he was just being himself.

It’s emblematic of the contrasts in Singson’s life and work: the chaos and the class. He excels where his freewheeling personality intersects with his disciplined pursuit to perfect his craft. This delicate balance hints at the tradeoffs he’s made to become an excellent chef who caters to large audiences while aiming to hold onto his identity—a reality he’s still working through to this day.

Singson was born in Manila and moved to Vancouver when he was nine. Like many great chefs, his culinary journey began at his mom’s side. As a teenager, he worked in her Filipino restaurant, Wilma’s Specialty House, where he cleaned, prepped ingredients, cooked, and ate (“my favourite part,” he recalls, sitting in a conference room at a downtown Vancouver WeWork).

Following the closure of Wilma’s, Singson went to work at Vancouver staples like Cactus Club, Glowbal, Coast, and a now-closed spot called Sanafir. He was barely an adult, but he was hungry to learn as much as he could at some of the biggest restaurant groups in the city. 

In 2011, Singson helped chef Mikey Robbins, now of AnnaLena fame, open the Oakwood Canadian Bistro, which closed in 2019. Then came “one of my favourite experiences of my life,” Singson says. He’s talking about his time at Boneta, a much-loved Gastown eatery that shut down in 2013.

One experience at Boneta is seared into Singson’s memory. It was a Friday night, the dining room was bustling, and chef Jason Liezert, for whatever reason, let Singson run the sauce section of the kitchen. 

“At that style of restaurant, there aren’t really training days—you just get thrown in the mix and you have to make it,” he explains. “I killed it.” 

He also worked the hardest he’s ever worked, and his time there met every expectation he had for working at high-end eateries.

“I had never experienced sitting down for staff meal,” he notes. “I didn’t come from that style of restaurant. That doesn’t happen at Cactus and Glowbal. Staff meals before service—those things, for me, are special, because like, man, chefs are bonded by trauma. You’re going through all this shit. You’re always stressed sorting out the station, and you have 30 minutes to eat staff meal. I love those moments. So I never wanted anything less.”

After a bit of time spent cooking at the Fairmont Pacific Rim, Singson flew to Australia to stage (intern, essentially) and then work at a well-known Melbourne restaurant called Vue de Monde. 

“It was the first time I was surrounded by people who were obsessed,” he recalls. Australia is where he laid the groundwork for something that Vancouverites would later come to know him for: epic pop-up dinners. He partnered with other chefs from acclaimed restaurants like Sydney’s Tetsuya and Fat Duck in England, serving a five-course dinner at the now-closed Saint Crispin while DMX music blasted in the background.

One of the dishes was kingfish cured in nori and English breakfast tea. Packed with umami, it was served with what Singson calls “Carlton herbs” because all the garnishes were foraged from the nearby Carlton neighbourhood.

“We would knock on doors of houses that had bushes of pineapple sage,” he recalls. “All our garnishes, like 17 of them, were from the neighbourhood.”

Back in Vancouver after his visa ran out, Singson joined the team at the soon-to-open AnnaLena, where he worked for a couple of years before leaving for a stint at Culinary Capers catering. Then he launched FAM, Inc.: his catering and private chef company. He’s been running it ever since.

As a private chef, Singson serves a variety of clients with a vast array of needs. For some it’s daily meals or fine dining-style dinners; for others, it might be bulk trail mix. What Singson appreciates most, beyond the business and cooking, is getting to know people. 

“It’s a blessing, for sure,” he says. “Some of the people I’ve cooked for [provide] some of my favourite conversations.”

Singson’s pop-ups have been equally instructive—particularly in helping him reflect on his own personal growth and evolution. In 2022, Singson launched Mabuhay YVR, a pop-up dinner series at Bao Bei. For him, it was special because it was the first time he marketed an event as Filipino. It was his own version of radical self-acceptance.

“For such a long time, I’d always wanted to kind of forget my roots. Because you know, you come from the Philippines, you move to Canada, you want to be as Western as possible,” he shares. “But what’s been really interesting in the last four or five years is me trying to reconnect and re-educate myself on things I’ve tried to forget about. The process and the journey have been so exciting; it brings out new dishes in my head.”

These dishes were hard to classify, and that was kind of the point. Singson treated guests to plates such as pandan toast with cheddar cheese ice cream, and custard foam made of ube (a purple yam dessert); he did his version of chicken adobo (a popular Filipino dish) with crispy wings, braised thighs, and hearts, alongside mushrooms, sunchokes, and shaved foie gras; he also delighted patrons with spot prawns wrapped in perilla leaf, atchara, chewy fried shallots, and a tofu emulsion. 

“I can never put things in a certain category,” he says. “But I know it’s authentic to me.”

Foodies took note, packing Bao Bei every Monday for four weeks. 

“I couldn’t believe that support,” he says. “I was like, ‘Holy shit!’ Our finale was on a snow day in November and it was still full. Karaoke was happening, food was being served. It was beautiful.”

It reminded him that he wants a restaurant of his own (something he’s wanted since at least 2015, when he told this publication about it). What most people don’t know, though, is that he almost had one. A space was identified, a team was assembled, investors were lined up, and it was all moving forward. Until it wasn’t.

He won’t name names or share in detail what happened, but offers this: “We didn’t see eye to eye with the food.” Pushed for information, he adds, “Of course, there were other things too; I’m not perfect.”

He’s not giving up on the dream, though. He’s taking steps to ensure when the next chance arises, he can take it. 

“I still want to open a restaurant,” Singson says. “I’m itching to get back into that game because I’m 35. Ten years from now, I don’t think I can put the same grind in. But I know I’ve got 10 more years, and I don’t want to leave this world without making an impact on the shit that I said I was going to do.”