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

Reading Time:2 minutes

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

Published: 5:15pm, 13 Mar 2024

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

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

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.

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.