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How Top Chef changed the life of Barry Quek, chef of a Michelin-star Hong Kong restaurant, and the TV cooking competition’s ‘really big impact’ on him

  • Watching Top Chef, Barry Quek of one-Michelin-star Whey learned about ‘a lot of cooking techniques’, from making geoduck sashimi to cooking with liquid nitrogen
  • The chef talks about how the American TV show also taught him the importance of ‘a plan B’ in the kitchen, but also why he’d never consider appearing on it

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Barry Quek at one-Michelin-star Whey, in Hong Kong’s Central neighbourhood. The chef says American cooking competition show Top Chef had “a really big impact” on his career. Photo: Edmond So

Long-running American television cooking competition “Top Chef” pits contestants against each other in a series of culinary challenges, using a progressive elimination format.

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Barry Quek, head chef at Michelin-star Hong Kong restaurant Whey, where he serves modern European cuisine featuring ingredients influenced by his Singaporean background, tells Richard Lord how it changed his life.

I remember first watching it when I was in the army, at 19 years old, in 2009 or 2010. As a young kid, I wanted to be a policeman, but I started off working in a kitchen part time and discovered I liked working in [the food and beverage industry]. My first job was in a McDonald’s when I was 14 years old.
As well as Top Chef, I liked watching Hell’s Kitchen (another elimination-based cooking competition programme, hosted by Gordon Ramsay), but that was very dramatic; Top Chef is very realistic.
Hung Huynh, the winner of Top Chef season 3, was an inspiration to Quek. Photo: Getty Images
Hung Huynh, the winner of Top Chef season 3, was an inspiration to Quek. Photo: Getty Images

Watching it, there were a lot of cooking techniques and flavours that I’d never seen or heard of before. I remember watching season three, and the winner (Hung Huynh) was Vietnamese-American.

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He used geoduck, which I’d never seen before, and the way he prepared it, to be eaten raw, like sushi, was super interesting to me. It had a really big impact on me – all these years later, I can still remember that particular ingredient he used.

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