Profile | How chef-owner Leonard Cheung of Cultivate got his start as a teen with no experience at ‘demon chef’ Alvin Leung’s three-Michelin-star Bo Innovation
- At the age of 28, Leonard Cheung has opened his own restaurant in Hong Kong, an idea he had eight years ago while training at the Culinary Institute of America
- He learned fine-dining cuisine at Eleven Madison Park and NoMad in New York, discovered Southern cooking, and made a name in Hong Kong catering private events
How did you get into cooking? “I started baking Rice Krispies squares and cereal bars when I was around six years old growing up in Los Angeles. My sweet tooth came from eating stuff like Pop-Tarts, but my parents didn’t buy them for me, so this was my way of having them, by making it. By the time I was 10 years old I was making cookies, biscuits and cornbread from scratch. I still use the same recipe for buttermilk biscuits in my strawberry picnic dessert at Cultivate.
“After high school I wanted to be a pastry chef. My parents did not want me doing this at all. My dad had me when he was older; after having three daughters he finally had a son. He wanted me to take over the family business but I wasn’t interested.”
How did you end up at Bo Innovation? “I wanted to go straight into pastry school or culinary school, but I managed to get a job at Bo Innovation for a year with no previous work experience. Chef-owner Alvin [Leung] always smoked a cigar outside his Wan Chai location and I would bother him, asking, ‘Do you have a job for me?’ And every time he’d say, ‘Who the f*** are you? Get out of here! How old are you? Do you have any experience?’
And then one day he wasn’t sitting out there, it was just the chefs and they said, ‘Come in, do a trial,’ and the next day Alvin sees me and says, ‘What the f*** are you doing here?’”
Why did you want to work at Bo Innovation? “I was 18 at the time. I knew that Bo Innovation had three Michelin stars and they were doing something inventive and avant-garde. Even before I set foot in the kitchen I already knew the ratios and formulas for spherification [to make edible pearls], and avant-garde modern techniques. When I was in high school, instead of studying physics I was reading how to do tricks with liquid nitrogen and how to set agar-agar. At Bo Innovation I learned these avant-garde techniques before I knew how to make chicken stock; I highly recommend [aspiring chefs] to not take that route.