Meet the chef marrying Cantonese and Jiangnan cuisines at Wynn Palace in Macau

At 34, Kevin Zhu has already clocked more kitchen miles and career pivots than many chefs twice his age. He has been a farmhouse wok master, a fledgling apprentice scrubbing floors, a restaurateur-entrepreneur in northern China and the youngest Chinese executive chef in the Shangri-La hotel group’s history. Today, he stands at the helm of Lakeview Palace at Wynn Palace in Macau, quietly orchestrating one of the most intriguing culinary conversations in the Chinese-speaking world: a seamless, soulful marriage of Cantonese and Jiangnan gastronomy. But his path was never a straight line – it began with a decision that was not even his own. “I never dreamed of being a chef,” Zhu laughs, recalling when his father secretly enrolled him in a cooking school in Guangzhou when he was just a teenager. “He just came home one day and told me he signed me up. I had no idea. “We used to watch those New Oriental cooking school ads on TV together. He thought it would be a stable job – and maybe help me find a girlfriend.” ‘I quit after a week’ The romance was far from instant. His first kitchen internship lasted all of seven days. “The chefs were so harsh back then. In school, the teachers were kind, but in a real kitchen, if you made a small mistake, the chefs wouldn’t be polite. I quit after a week.” A sympathetic instructor arranged a second chance at a restaurant where an older schoolmate took him under his wing. This time, it held. Zhu started as an apprentice, fetching ingredients and cleaning woks, and his diligence was rewarded. Within three months, he was on chopping board duty. “I was very diligent and willing, and the chefs were in turn willing to teach me. That was when I realised I could really make a career out of this,” he says. Zhu sharpened his skills in the rough-and-tumble of Guangdong’s countryside farmhouse kitchens, where small teams meant he had to do everything – butcher, stir-fry, season, plate. It was a formative period of creative freedom. “The customers liked my flavours. I was able to develop my own style.” That self-taught confidence eventually landed him at Lei Garden in Guangzhou, an establishment famed as the “Shaolin Temple” of Cantonese cuisine. Despite already having been a head chef elsewhere, Zhu had to start from the bottom all over again. “In Lei Garden, the philosophy is: first learn to be a good person, then learn to do the job. You have to understand how to control the heat, the oil, every ingredient and most importantly, yourself. It was a complete reset. That’s where my commitment to being a chef really solidified. “I learned the foundation, the principles – not just recipes, but a way of thinking.” Moving to Shanghai By 2017, still in his mid-twenties, his reputation had caught the attention of the Michelin-starred Xin Rong Ji in Shanghai, where he was brought in as head chef of Cantonese cuisine. It was there, surrounded by the refined culinary ecosystem of Shanghai – a city he describes as “inclusive, where all the great cuisines can bloom, a place of hidden dragons and crouching tigers” – where he took the opportunity to sharpen his skills in Shanghainese and Taizhou cuisines, his mind quietly opening to culinary worlds beyond the Cantonese wok cooking he knew. Soon, he fell into the orbit of the legendary chef Hou Xinqing, widely known in China as the “Huaiyang knife master”. The meeting happened, improbably, on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. “Master Hou sent me a private message. He called me ‘Zhu Ge’ – Brother Zhu,” he says with a smile, still shocked. “I thought, is this a scam? But it was really him. He said he was opening a restaurant in Shanghai and asked if I’d be interested.” After a whirlwind tryout – two rounds of cooking, including a hastily arranged tasting in a borrowed kitchen on the Bund – Zhu became the executive chef of Jiangnan Wok at the Shangri-La Qiantan. At 28, he was the youngest Chinese executive chef in the hotel group’s history. Under Master Hou’s mentorship, Zhu underwent a profound transformation. “The first dish he taught me, shoulder to shoulder, was lion’s head meatball. To be honest, at first I looked down on Huaiyang dishes. As a Cantonese chef, I thought they were just soups and water. But after [Master Hou] explained the stories behind them, I was stunned.” He adds that Hou also taught him the knife skills required to make wensi doufu, a famous Jiangnan dish featuring tofu cut into threadlike strands. “It’s not something any chef can just do. I realised I had been superficial. I had to unlearn my arrogance.” Blurring the lines That process eventually gave birth to his culinary style today, which he describes as stages. At first, he fought in two separate styles – a Cantonese move here, a Huaiyang move there. Gradually, the boundaries blurred. “It takes time for you, and for your team, to accept that you are no longer just a Cantonese kitchen. I had to persuade them to embrace Jiangnan culture. Now, you cannot pull the two apart. They have become one.” The result is his personal culinary philosophy: every dish must have a root. “For Huaiyang, you trace that root back to its traditions. I already have my Cantonese roots. The question is, how do you bind them until they grow into a single tree? It’s not just piling ingredients together. It has to have a soul as its foundation.” At his current home, Lakeview Palace, that philosophy is articulated in a menu of striking, deeply personal dishes. The dishes read like a map of Zhu’s own journey, such as Shanghai-style tea-smoked threadfin fish, crystal dumplings with yellow croaker, Jiangnan double-boiled triple-layer duck soup, and wensi doufu with lobster. “Guests sometimes ask me, ‘Why did you switch to Jiangnan cuisine? Is Cantonese food not good?’ I tell them it’s not about one being better. It’s about the moments and encounters in your life. Fate brought me here. “My food is a culmination of everything I have done and learned until this moment. I want to keep creating dishes that tell my guests exactly who I am.” Lakeview Palace, G/F, West Esplanade, Wynn Palace, Avenida da Nave Desportiva, Coloane-Taipa, Macau.

Meet the chef marrying Cantonese and Jiangnan cuisines at Wynn Palace in Macau

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}Chef Kevin Zhu blends Cantonese and Jiangnan cuisines at Lakeview Palace in Macau, crafting dishes that reflect his unique culinary journey

‘I quit after a week’

Chef Kevin Zhu blends Cantonese and Jiangnan cuisines at Lakeview Palace in Macau, crafting dishes that reflect his unique culinary journey