A Vietnamese chef in Germany on his popular fusion restaurants and quest for a Michelin star
- Vietnam-born The Duc Ngo, a child refugee in Hong Kong who became a successful chef in Germany, has his eye on a Michelin star
In Germany, chef and restaurateur The Duc Ngo is known fondly as “Le Duc” (French for The Duke) or “the King of Kantstrasse” thanks to his seven wildly popular restaurants on Kant Street in west Berlin. Here, he is regularly approached by well-wishers wanting to say hello, shake his hand and take a selfie with him.
Despite the aristocratic nicknames, Ngo is no prince, nor was he born with a silver spoon in his mouth. Some of his earliest memories are of the sharp smell of marine engine fuel and the seaweed scents of the harbour when he reached Hong Kong as a refugee in 1979.
As a young child he fled Vietnam with his siblings and mother after the country sent troops to neighbouring Cambodia to oust Pol Pot at the end of 1978 and relations with China, which supported the Khmer Rouge, turned aggressive.
Vietnam’s Chinese minority had long been discriminated against, and Ngo’s Chinese father and Vietnamese mother had been forced to close their grocery store after repeated harassment. When Ngo was four his father died, leaving his 23-year-old mother to look after their three young children.
When Vietnam launched a full-scale invasion of what was then known as Democratic Kampuchea, Ngo’s aunt on his father’s side persuaded his mother and the three boys to flee Hanoi with her, leaving behind all that they had known.
They boarded a boat for China, designed for 20 passengers but loaded with 80, that crashed into rocks somewhere along the Chinese coast. They lost almost everything they owned.
