Profile | Singaporean chef of 2-Michelin-star restaurant Re-Naa is gunning for gold at world’s culinary Olympics
- Mathew Leong, 28, wants to be the first Singaporean – indeed, Asian – to win the Bocuse d’Or world chef championship, and has a US$320,000 kitchen to train in
- He says he has come to realise a good chef only needs ‘a main ingredient, a sauce and a small garnish’ – but everything has to be cooked to perfection
Many chefs dream of creating memorable dishes in a state-of-the-art kitchen. For Singaporean culinary wunderkind Mathew Leong, executive chef at the two Michelin-star restaurant Re-Naa in Norway, a US$320,000 hi-tech kitchen is simply his training ground.
His ambition is to win the prestigious biennial Bocuse d’Or world chef championship, widely considered among chefs to be the Olympics of the gastronomy world. No one from Asia has ever previously won.
The 28-year-old chef is so serious about achieving this goal that he and his team of sponsors have spared no expense in building his training kitchen in Norway, where he is based.
The set-up is an exact replica of the final competition hall in Lyons, France, and features the same equipment.
“It is like training for a sports activity,” says Leong, who is a second-degree black belt in the Korean martial art taekwondo. “Besides the kitchen set-up [through which] I can familiarise myself with the ‘small little box’ [setting] for the competition, there is also a coach to train my focus mentally and physically.”
The next competition will be held in 2025, with national heats beginning in 2024.
