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Food and Drinks
LifestyleFood & Drink

After work at Noma and The Chairman, Joyeta Ng wants to be your Asian mum and cook for you

  • After working in Den, Kitchen Table, Noma and The Chairman, chef Joyeta Ng is set on transforming the perception of Cantonese food

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Chef Joyeta Ng explains why she wants to open her own restaurant, and her journey to falling in love with making Cantonese food. Photo: Alexander Brunacci
Angela Hui

Joyeta Ng, who grew up in Hong Kong, has always had a sixth sense for good food.

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She shared a home in Pok Fu Lam, on Hong Kong Island, with her parents and she loved cooking with her mother. She also spent her summers in Japan with her half-Japanese grandmother and extended family.

After studying psychology at university in Scotland, she worked in advertising in London for five years. She fell out of love with the job and, while studying Japanese in Osaka for three months in 2016, she visited her cousin in Tokyo.

They dined at Den, a two-Michelin-star modern kaiseki restaurant. “It was a light bulb moment,” Ng, 35, recalls. “I knew I wanted to learn more about food and eat this every day.”
Prosperity rainbow salad with a fermented tofu dressing, from chef Joyeta Ng’s London pop-up, uses produce sourced from Heritage Fruit & Vegetables in the British capital. Photo: Jessica Wang
Prosperity rainbow salad with a fermented tofu dressing, from chef Joyeta Ng’s London pop-up, uses produce sourced from Heritage Fruit & Vegetables in the British capital. Photo: Jessica Wang
The day after her meal at Den, she emailed the restaurant’s husband-and-wife owners, chef Zaiyu Hasegawa and general manager Emi Hasegawa, to ask for a job. Despite having no prior professional cooking experience, she got it – and she thrived.
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