Profile | 3-Michelin-starred chef on how Chinese food inspires him, ‘clever takes’ that went wrong, and running Shenzhen’s Ensue from the other side of the world
- Christopher Kostow is executive chef at Ensue, the first restaurant in southern China to make it on the Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list, which it did this year
- His three-Michelin-star Meadowood, in California, burnt down in 2020 in a wildfire that was he says was ‘like the apocalypse’
I grew up outside Chicago in the US, in a family that ate at a lot of restaurants. My father would take us to the city of Milwaukee, in the state of Wisconsin, for German food, or to the west side of Chicago for Italian, and we’d dine on dim sum in Chinatown at a time when no one was eating it in Chicago.
My first job in the restaurant industry was at a music venue making cheeseburgers and nachos when I was about 14. I began as a cashier working the register. The guys in the kitchen were drinking beers, listening to music and wearing whatever they wanted. I said, ‘That’s what I want to do.’
The apocalyptic fire at Meadowood in 2020
We had a bunch of VIPs that Saturday evening [in September] and we had done a new menu. It was really fun and dynamic.
I went home and told my wife that it’s a marvel that the restaurant where I’ve been for, at that time, 13 years, continues to be engaging and exciting for me as a chef.
That evening, another fire broke out on the other side of Napa Valley [in California], and it was like the apocalypse. We saw an image online of the fire blowing out the restaurant. It was a shock to all, compounded by the fact that it was happening in the middle of a pandemic.
