Ask Michelle Garnaut, the pioneering Australian chef and restaurateur, how much the Hong Kong dining scene has evolved, particularly from the point of view of female chefs, since she opened M at the Fringe — the first independent fine-dining restaurant outside a hotel in the city — in 1989. You can expect by way of response a very wry, very worldly, very expressive snort. “Back then, cooking wasn’t even seen as a proper job,” she says. “Virtually no women were involved. I had one talented young female chef — a local — who quit to become a manager at KFC because her parents thought that any managerial role was more respectable than being a chef.”
It took more than 20 years for such attitudes to change, Garnaut reckons. In that time a generational shift occurred, given impetus by the rise of social media. Successful chefs — mostly men but a growing number of women as well — became ever more visible. Then, in 2013, Vicky Lau was awarded her first Michelin star at Tate Dining Room. A second star followed in 2021. It would be difficult to overstate the importance of Lau’s example to aspiring female chefs not only in Hong Kong but across Asia. Cast your eye over the Hong Kong restaurant scene today and many of its most exciting and talented chefs are women. Meet three of the best.
May Chow