How ‘hard, crazy’ mother set Sydney chef on road to culinary glory

What food do you remember from your childhood? “My mum always cook­ed Vietnamese food so I grew up eating pho. I would come home and smell the huge stock­pot of broth, whether it was duck noodle soup or beef noodle soup, and I remember my mum chopping chicken bones with a big cleaver on the chopping board on the floor. This was before she opened restaurants.”

What was the first thing you cooked? “I remember cooking spaghetti bolognese for the family when I was about seven or eight years old. It came out good. Back then, spaghetti bolognese wasn’t [made from scratch with] tinned tomatoes and stuff, it was literally ready-made pasta sauce – cook the beef and the sauce was ready – and then having Kraft parmesan cheese in the shaker. That’s the spaghetti bolognese we were eating.”

Your mother made you work in her restaurant. Was she a good boss? “She was hard, crazy. She was in the kitchen cooking, so she’d just yell at you all the time. But it was good. It opened my eyes to being the front of house, which was fun, being a waiter, but I got A$40 a shift – that was 16 years ago. After that, I wanted to work in some of the best restaurants in Sydney, so my mum got me a job at the most popular restaurant in the city at the time: Longrain, the Thai restaurant. I learned about Thai food, teaching my palate, trying to get the balance of seasoning – hot, sour, sweet, salty. And then, for the next five years, I worked fine dining at Tetsuya’s, Marque and Bentley Restaurant & Bar.”