How Hong Kong’s two Michelin star chef Vicky Lau became a culinary icon – Tate Dining Room’s Chinese-French fusion made her Asia’s first woman to bag a second star
- Other groundbreaking female chefs in Hong Kong include Peggy Chan, formerly chef at fine dining vegetarian restaurant Nectar, and May Chow
- Lau’s kitchen is more than 50 per cent female and doesn’t tolerate Gordon Ramsay-style histrionics – although she still dubs fine dining ‘ego cooking’
Despite the status bestowed by her double Michelin star, Vicky Lau says the battle to improve gender parity in the male-dominated world of professional kitchens is a long way from won – but small victories bring her hope.
In the fiendishly competitive arena of Hong Kong’s fine dining scene, few have had as remarkable an ascent as Lau.
The culinary industry is a male-dominated industry … but it also expects women to behave like men – you either fit in or you get out
In little more than a decade, she has gone from opening a small cafe to running one of the finance hub’s most lauded restaurants.
Many chefs love to insist in interviews that awards don’t mean much. Lau, 40, is refreshingly upfront.
“I didn’t get in the industry because I want to have all these accolades. But over time, it did become a goal,” she said.
Asked whether the gender watershed moment of the double Michelin mattered, she replied: “I think it does make a statement, because it encourages a lot of people in our industry to power on.”