The Hong Kong chef who quit teaching to wow Paris diners with Cantonese food

Thirty-one-year-old Luke Ng Cheuk-hang has travelled around the world in search of culinary inspiration. The Hong Kong-born chef, who is currently based in Paris, has cooked in kitchens across France, the UK, Ukraine, Japan and Hong Kong. Yet at Chez Elisa, the Parisian bistro where Ng is head chef, it is his Cantonese dishes – such as his Yangzhou fried rice – that have earned him a loyal following. “Nobody expected the fried rice to be this good,” he says, adding that people usually associate fried rice with the versions containing peas and corn from Chinese takeaway shops. “And that’s not how we do it at all.” Cooking fried rice is no hard task for Ng, who has trained in Michelin-star kitchens, including France’s Mirazur, which was ranked No 1 on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list in 2019. He also honed his skills at Septime in Paris, Florilège in Tokyo, and Kitchen Table in London. Ng, who started cooking professionally at 23, never intended to become a chef. He studied mathematics and education at The Education University of Hong Kong, graduating in 2017. “I was the first kid who got into university from my father’s side,” he says. “They were very proud when they found out that I was going to university to be a teacher.” Two years into his degree, Ng took on a part-time job working in a small restaurant in Tuen Mun, in Hong Kong’s New Territories. “I learned everything [the chef] taught me. It even got to a point where he knew that there was not much more he could teach me. So he let me self-learn fine-dining techniques and make it in his kitchen.” Ng juggled his degree and his new-found passion. Around the time he finished his dissertation, he discovered One Star House Party, a travelling culinary team led by former Noma chef James Sharman, who was visiting Hong Kong for a pop-up event. He emailed the team and offered to work for free, hoping to learn from them. In the end, Ng helped Sharman in the kitchen for a whole month. By the end of the pop-up, Sharman had approached Ng with an invitation to join the next stop: London. Ng agreed and immediately applied for a working holiday visa to go to the UK. From that moment on, he has been hungry to explore cultures and learn from different kitchens. “When I was in Hong Kong, I was dreaming about going to the UK. And then when I was in the UK, I was dreaming about going to Japan or France. And when I was working for other people, I was always wondering, ‘What if I don’t do it this way, what if I do it the other way?’” he says. He leapt at the chance when his friend and former Kitchen Table colleague Elisa Doisneau approached him to head up the kitchen at her new bistro. Chez Elisa has been open since January, and Ng has been enjoying his autonomy in the kitchen. “[Fine-dining restaurants] are like a military brigade. You have to be 100 per cent obedient, so there was not a lot of space for me to be myself. I had to forget about myself, dissociate, obey and get through the 18-hour days. But now, having my own kitchen really allows me to be myself and to love what I’m doing, what I’m cooking, and I think that’s the most important thing,” he says. Chez Elisa’s menu, which changes monthly, features international dishes from Greek salads and Cantonese baked pork chop rice to French-inspired terrines. While these dishes have become crowd favourites among regulars, Ng’s true passion remains fine dining, and he hopes to open his own restaurant one day when he can find the budget and a business partner on the same page as him. In the meantime, he has developed Calambour, a pop-up concept in which he turns Hong Kong flavours into gourmet plates. He ran guest chef residencies at Hong Kong’s Test Kitchen in August 2025 and at Carousel in London in January. Ng also regularly hosts Calambour takeover nights at Chez Elisa, with a fine-dining set menu replacing the classic bistro offerings. In May, he started his new Instagram account @lukey_in_paris, both to document his restaurant journey and to attract potential business partners. His debut video went viral, gaining him more than 25,000 followers in his first month. “I always wanted to tell my story to someone because I want to eventually have a fine-dining restaurant and find someone who shares the same vision with me,” he says. View this post on Instagram A post shared by Luke Ng (@lukey_in_paris) On his account, he posts Cantonese-narrated reels about his culinary journey and behind-the-scenes looks at the bistro from a chef’s point of view. He knew his decision to use Cantonese in his videos would limit his exposure, but he believed it was the best way to share his story with Hongkongers and challenge the city’s perceptions of chefs. “It’s quite a shame that people in Hong Kong don’t see [cooking] as a great occupation sometimes. And I feel like now maybe it’s a good opportunity for me to share more about what I’ve been doing and maybe even change perspectives a little bit,” he says. “Just because [chefs] work a lot and the conditions are not as good as being a banker or a teacher doesn’t mean that they are inferior to other people in society. If anything, it means that they are more hard-working. Being a chef can be meaningful as well.”

The Hong Kong chef who quit teaching to wow Paris diners with Cantonese food

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}After studying education, Luke Ng’s love of cooking took him to France, where he tells his story through creative dishes and Instagram videos

After studying education, Luke Ng’s love of cooking took him to France, where he tells his story through creative dishes and Instagram videos