Michelin-starred woman chef embraces 'role model' label

HONG KONG • Despite the institutional status bestowed by her double Michelin stars, chef 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.

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.

Earlier this year, Tate Dining Room was awarded two Michelin stars, a belated breakthrough first for Asia's overlooked female chefs.

Many chefs love to insist in interviews that awards do not mean much.

Lau, 40, is refreshingly honest. "I didn't get into the industry because I want to have all these accolades. But, over time, it did become a goal," she says.

Asked whether the gender watershed moment of the double Michelin stars mattered, she says: "I think it does make a statement because it encourages a lot of people in our industry to power on."

A former graphic designer who switched mid-career to retrain, Lau says she "really didn't think twice about being a female and a chef" when she entered the trade.

"Ignorance was bliss at that time," she says with a smile, recalling how many at her Cordon Bleu training in Bangkok were women.

Once in the business, she saw how men dominated, especially when it came to ascending ranks or owning top establishments.

As she won attention for her dishes, she initially found it exhausting to continually be asked about her gender, the example she was setting and the role model she had become.

But, over time, she came to embrace the reality that her success could encourage others. "It actually became one of my motivations to go to work," she says.

Alongside contemporaries such as Peggy Chan and May Chow, Lau is part of a new generation of female Hong Kong chefs who have become examples of successful and vocal entrepreneurs.

Global culinary award programmes have long been overly fixated on both Western cuisine and male chefs.

It is a charge of which brands are now aware. Slowly, winners' lists are starting to look a little more representative of the world itself.

The #MeToo movement also brought some limited reckoning over the type of alpha-male behaviour once lauded by food critics and television shows.

But improvement can feel frustratingly gradual.

"The culinary industry is a male-dominated industry, as everybody knows, but it also expects women to behave like men," says Chan, who carved out a space as one of Hong Kong's first fine-dining vegetarian chefs. "You either fit in or you get out."

The slow growth of women both in professional kitchens and in owning restaurants, she says, is starting to make an impact. "There's a lot more room for different types of personalities."

Lau says her kitchen is now more than 50 per cent female and that chefs with children are an asset, not a headache.

Those with egos can leave them at the kitchen door. "We don't just celebrate Gordon Ramsay-style screaming in your face," she says.

Lau's dishes combine French and Chinese cuisine and are achingly beautiful - each presentation painstakingly plated in a vivid display of her design background.

And she is determined to get wider recognition for Chinese cooking techniques. One example she cites is "double-steamed" or "superior" broths - the time-consuming stocks of Chinese cooking that give any consomme a run for its money.

Her business stayed afloat during the pandemic with catering, a takeaway service and a patisserie shop. It also opened for lunch for the first time, offering a less pricey tasting menu set around a single ingredient. "We've done rice, tofu, tea, soya sauce," Lau says.

Each course of her latest menu is built from different parts of a plant: seeds, leaves, bulbs, stems, fruit, roots and flowers.

The pandemic forced her into a more creative, reflective space. "I think Covid-19 will put globalisation on a bit of a pause," she says, adding that fine-dining restaurants are being forced to source locally, something consumers were already pushing for. Why fly in French turbot, she asked, when there are perfectly good alternatives in local wet markets?

She describes fine dining as ego cooking "because you are kind of expressing yourself on a plate".

"A lot of times you can be lost a little bit," she adds. "That's why it's time to make more humble ingredients like soya sauce or rice the star of a dish."

AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE