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Mabel Lui

It is no secret that Hong Kong is home to many exceptional chefs, who regularly showcase dishes from their restaurants through social media.
Upon glancing at Andrew Wong’s Instagram feed – a curation of aesthetically pleasing plates – you might mistake him for one of these chefs. Clues from his bio and Story highlights, which reveal he is 20 and cooks in a private kitchen, reveal otherwise.
In actuality, Wong is mostly self-taught and single-handedly cooks eight-course private dinners on a biweekly basis.
At first glance, he comes across as somewhat reticent and a little introverted. But when he talks about the intricacies of preparing a dish, that initial modesty disappears and his eyes shine with a quiet but assured confidence.

Wong has been cooking and baking for 12 years, and made his first foray into the kitchen to make chocolate chip cookies when he was eight years old.
He was instantly hooked and, with the help of his family’s domestic helper, Dada, he followed the cookies with a flurry of baked goods including breads and French macarons – notoriously finicky.
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For Christmas the year he turned 13, he made beef Wellington for a family dinner by following a recipe by British chef Gordon Ramsay.
During school breaks, his parents and siblings would invite their friends over and have Wong cook for them in exchange for pocket money. Every successful meal made him “even more passionate about cooking”.
Shows like the Netflix series Chef’s Table were an influence too, and Wong quickly became enamoured by the concept of fine dining. “It’s just pure art,” he says. In particular, he was inspired by Italian chef Massimo Bottura’s episode.

“That’s when I really started to want to tell my own stories, because he tells [a] story through dishes, especially the one where [one of his chefs] dropped the lemon tart. He turned something so ugly into something so beautiful, and that’s what I wanted to do with my life.”
By 15, Wong knew he wanted to become a professional chef. He convinced his parents to let him attend culinary school, and together they found Le Cordon Bleu New Zealand – one of the few culinary schools that admit people under the age of 18.
“At first, my parents were a bit against it. I hadn’t even graduated high school and I already wanted to go to culinary school. But I just kept insisting and in the end, I went when I was 16,” Wong says.
I just wasn’t ready. I wasn’t prepared – I just thought I could do it
Andrew Wong on his first attempt at making fine-dining fare
Six months into his five-year programme, Wong’s journey came to a halt through no fault of his own – while he was in Hong Kong on holiday, New Zealand enacted Covid-19 prevention measures that meant he was unable to re-enter the country.
“In New Zealand, it was very, very strict. They [didn’t] let me back in for two years,” Wong says. “I just kept waiting and hoping that the next three months, they’d let me in. In the end, I just let go of it.”
It was during this time that Wong began hosting regular private dinners at home at the suggestion of his parents. He made his first dinner in spring 2021, which he admits was disastrous.

“It was complete s***. I just wasn’t ready. I wasn’t prepared – I just thought I could do it,” he says. “When I started doing fine dining, I hadn’t even been to a fine-dining restaurant, ever.
“So when I realised it was a completely different story, I started going up to a lot of different fine-dining restaurants, just eating there and seeing the experience, seeing how I could recreate it in my own way.”
Through his research, Wong picked up tips on how to tell stories with dishes and took note of the overall dining experience. One of his most memorable meals was at Arbor, a restaurant in Central on Hong Kong Island which is headed by chef Eric Räty.

“His menu is omakase-style, which is super interesting for a Nordic chef. And it just made me inspired to go find my own path as well.”
Today, Wong’s dishes are a far cry from the first ones he made. They are more refined and each dish on his menu – which changes roughly every season and features a fusion of cuisines – tells a specific story.
His dish “Dada”, for example, is a tribute to his family’s helper, who has been with them for over 30 years. “Since I was born, she was always there taking care of me,” Wong says. “She cooks very good Chinese food, and our family favourite from her is sweet and sour pork.”

Wong’s take on the beloved dish features a crispy sweet and sour pork served with grilled bell pepper, grilled pineapple and pineapple granita – a dish of contrasts between hot and cold, and sweet and sour.
A previous dish called “Life in Pink”, which consists of pink candyfloss and fruit tea, came to fruition after Wong listened to the 1945 Édith Piaf song “La Vie en Rose”; “Broken Hearts” was inspired by his own teenage break-up.
“Picture this,” reads an Instagram post from July 2020 showcasing this dessert. “You’re going through a heartbreak (as everyone does), you’re downing ice cream straight from the tub and squirting whipped cream in your mouth. [Your] heart feels … well broken, and the bleeding never stops. That’s this dish.”












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A post shared by Andrew Wong (@foodhub.andrew)



Wong says that, when he thinks about dishes, he often stays up all night to toss the idea around.
“This one I couldn’t get off my mind for quite a few months until I really made that dish,” he says. “I wanted to use that sad experience and turn it into something beautiful.”
Wong’s culinary endeavours do not stop at the food itself – he also creates his own tools and serving platters. He hand-built a pizza oven with fire bricks he bought from Taobao, and manually inserted a heavy-duty CPU fan into a wet grinder so that it can grind chocolate instead of just grains.


Using twigs and glue, he created handmade nests as part of the plating for a dish called “Chicken or the egg?”, and has made his own concrete plates.
Today, Wong prepares two meals a week in his family home. Private dinners can be reserved by directly messaging his Instagram account, @foodhub.andrew. Be prepared to wait – most of his customers have been regulars for years, know the chef well and come every time his menu changes.
“I’m just trying to make them proud,” he says of his early customers. “Not only did they watch me grow up, they look forward to where I go.”

Wong has just completed a course in Italy with baker Mirko Iannarelli on viennoiserie – breakfast pastries – and making panettone, known as “the Mount Everest of baking”. He has collaborations with other private chefs and venues planned in Hong Kong, and is working on a long-term project that he hopes to unveil towards the end of 2024.
The only thing he will say about it? “I’m going to be baking a lot more.”


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Lifestyle

Food & Drink

Andrew Wong may be young, but his age belies his dedication to cooking – the 20-year-old private kitchen chef cooks up eight-course dinners on a biweekly basis
He started cooking when he was eight and has not stopped since – even dropping out of regular education to join a culinary school when he was 16


Andrew Wong, a 20-year-old who runs a private kitchen from his family’s home, talks about the first time he cooked, going to culinary school at 16 and how he overcame a disastrous start in fine dining.


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