Retirement of Chef Clarence Tay | St. John's College UBC

Retirement Luncheon on February 24, 2026:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/sjcubc/sets/72177720332196397

Video Message from Dr. Edgar Liao: https://youtu.be/QbEavo1l-AE

Letter from Chef Clarence Tay, Owner/Operator, SJC Culinary Services

Dear SJC Residents, Alumni, College Administrators and Staff,

On behalf of the SJC Culinary Service team and myself, I would like to express our warmest gratitude to all of you for the opportunity to be a part of the larger SJC community. It has been a pleasure and an honour for us to be able to cook for you all these years and I hope that my team and I were able to contribute a small part to your experiences living in the college.

I have been a part of the larger SJC community for 25 years, that’s more than half of my adult life. It is a sobering and humbling thought to know that some of our current residents were not born yet when I first joined St. John’s College as the Executive Chef for the SJC Dining Society, how time flies by. I am very appreciative of the time I have spent here and the many wonderful and happy memories I possess. Throughout the 25 years, I have had the privilege to meet many of you, the current and former residents of the college. Many of you helped me and my team developed, defined and refined the SJC meal plan motto, The World Around Our Table through constructive feedback and suggestions. The support and goodwill that I received from all former Principals, Dr. Henry Yu, Ms. Sandra Shepard, Ms. Stacy Barber, past Dining Society Board members and all current and previous administration staff have been nothing but tremendous, for these I am truly grateful. In addition, I owed a lot to my former kitchen colleagues and my current team. All of them had and have been an instrumental part of why I have been with the College for a quarter of a century.

I will be retiring at the end of February and will certainly miss the spirit of the SJC community. Upon retiring, I will be joining my family at our farmstead in Thailand for my next chapter in life. Our farm is named Suanova Farm, a Thai and English wordplay meaning

Garden with The Shining Star, my wife’s Thai name being Shining Star. The farm is located at a small rural village in Potharam, Ratchaburi Province, about 90 kilometres west of Bangkok, Thailand. We are currently building out our farmstead for our human and animal family to live out a quiet, tranquil and healthy lifestyle. A place where we can welcome family, friends and guests to experience life on a farm in rural Thailand.

I invite you all to follow along our journey in our farmstead through our Instagram account link below.

Lastly, my best wishes to you and to your families, may you all achieve success and happiness, in academic pursuits, in career and in life.

Yours Sincerely

Clarence Tay
SJC Culinary Service

https://www.instagram.com/suanovafarm?igsh=bXgzbWNsMnN3cjZv&utm_source=qr

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Letter from Dr. Henry Yu, Principal

Dear SJC Community

I write this message today with a deep sense of gratitude to announce the upcoming retirement of Chef Clarence Tay. Although Chef Clarence had originally planned to retire in 2024, he generously agreed to postpone his retirement so his team at SJC Culinary Services would continue to feed and sustain our SJC residents through 2025. We are thankful to both him and his team for helping keep “The World Around Our Table” going through this final year of our 28 years of life in this beautiful building, and on behalf of St. John’s College UBC, I want to wish him and his family the best as he finally can enjoy his well-earned retirement after 24 years of being the heart of our community.

SJC began with shared dining as the core component of our community-building, but it was not until Chef Clarence Tay joined SJC in 2001 that we truly became “The World Around Our Table.” Chef Clarence’s rare ability to rotate our menu each day through a broad spectrum of international cuisines has been a foundational ethic of who we are. The values of cross-cultural learning and exchange, as well as mutual respect and an open mind with an open heart, are embodied in the daily ritual of sharing a meal that–for some of us–reminds us of home, while simultaneously offering for others a new, and sometimes, challenging experience. It is because of Chef Clarence Tay and his team’s ability to create and rotate through such a global array of culinary experiences that our residents for over a quarter of a century have sat together with an open stomach–ready to try new kinds of food–to go with an open heart and open mind in their conversations.

Chef Clarence came to SJC after completing his culinary training in Singapore, working in prestigious restaurants there before heading to Toronto in the mid-1980s. He honed his craft at the Delta Chelsea Inn, then Canada’s largest hotel, working his way up to the position of Banquet Chef. During that time he also completed and earned the designation of ‘Gold Seal’ certified Chef de Cuisine, a culinary program administered by the Canadian Culinary Institute. Clarence went back to Singapore after spending 8 years in Toronto. In Singapore, he worked in several premier hotels, including five years as Executive Chef of the award winning ‘Le Meridien Singapore.’ Through decades of experience, Chef Clarence gained a deep knowledge and expertise beyond French haute cuisine, becoming skilled in preparing a wide variety of international cuisines. After returning to Canada in 2000 to settle in Vancouver–to the great fortune of SJC and our 2000+ alumni–Chef Clarence joined SJC in October 2001 and has nourished and nurtured us ever since for 24 years.

Chef Clarence Tay and SJC Culinary Services will be ending their operations on February 28, 2026, in just over three and a half months. We will be sharing with SJC residents more details to follow on how UBC Food Services will provide meal plan options for residents in March and April 2026, so please look out for another message from me about our housing and meal plan transition.

St. John’s College owes a debt of gratitude for all that Chef Clarence Tay has done for us over the decades, including keeping our residents healthy and nourished during the most challenging period of the social distancing and isolation of CoViD-19. During a difficult period when the wholesale distribution of produce and delivery food to UBC campus had stopped, Chef Clarence personally went out early every morning to purchase food so that our 100+ residents who were unable to return home, and compelled to isolate themselves in SJC, would be fed each day.

Please join me in thanking Chef Clarence Tay for his tremendous service to a generation of our residents, and wishing him and his family all the best in their retirement in Thailand, where he and his family have nearly completed work on their dream retirement home. Chef Clarence will continue to share his love of preparing food for others even in his retirement, welcoming fortunate guests to his farm in the years to come…

Chef Clarence, we wish you the best in this next stage of your life!

—

Prof. Henry Yu
余全毅

Principal,

www.stjohns.ubc.ca
UBC’s International Graduate College

Professor, Dept. of History, UBC
1297-1873 East Mall
Vancouver, B.C.
V6T 1Z1

Co-Director, Centre for Asian Canadian Research and Engagement (ACRE), UBC

Affiliated Faculty, Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies at UBC

acam.arts.ubc.ca

“The World Around Our Table”

UBC Staff Member? You’re invited to Hot Lunch!

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