The accidental chef: how Singaporean Nicholas Chew designed a restaurant, ended up in the kitchen and learned fine-dining cuisine
- Now the executive chef of Bibo, a French fine-dining restaurant in Hong Kong, Nicholas Chew left school thinking he would be a painter
- He explains what he learned working at Nobu and L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon, and for Michelin-starred Shane Osborn, and what it meant to earn his own star
What was your childhood like? “I grew up in Singapore with my father’s side of the family, as my parents split up when I was very young. We ate traditional Peranakan food and celebrated Christmas and Chinese New Year. Every term break, my older brother and I spent time with my mum in Malaysia. She’s a good baker.
“I didn’t pull in good grades in school but I always knew I had a flair with my hands and I loved art as a kid. I went to art school in Singapore and thought I would be a painter, but then my mum suggested I try design. I did a three-year programme and enjoyed the colours, textures, building stuff, model-making.”
How did you get into cooking? “After I graduated at 17, I did mandatory national service for two years. When I finished that, it was 1997 and the Asian financial crisis. I was scrounging for work. I got a job designing the interior of a kaiseki place called Restaurant Kei [now closed], in Singapore. I was 21 and worked closely with the Japanese chef, Hajime Yasaka. Later, I asked him if I could work there on weekends.
“I did all the dirty work, like cleaning pots and pans and scaling fish, but it was fun. I ended up working there part time for about six months. That chef was my first mentor, he was only five years older than me. He was from Kyushu and after working hotel jobs he got his own place.”
Why did you move to Australia? “In 2006, I went to Melbourne for culinary school. I already knew Japanese cuisine, and culinary school taught me the basics of French cooking. To put myself through school, I worked for a Japanese restaurant called Shoya, which in Australia had one hat [a rating in the Good Food Guide] and served traditional yakiniku and kaiseki, and had a bar. When Nobu opened in Melbourne, at the Crown, in 2007, I worked there for five or six months and saw fusion food.”
How did you get to Hong Kong? “I got married in 2009 in Melbourne and my wife got headhunted to Hong Kong. By the end of that year I had followed her to Hong Kong and immediately got a job with L’Atelier de Joël Robuchon. It had two Michelin stars at the time [it has three stars now] and I wanted to see how they were able to get two stars.