Cuisine as heritage,
diplomacy, and soul.

A chef, I have come to believe, is the keeper of something older than himself. For fourteen years and six rooms I learned the craft — French technique in Paris, the warmth of Lyon's bouchon, the restraint of Japan's yōshoku, remade in Malaysia as contemporary French cuisine with Modernist techniques. That training now serves something larger than the plate: the conservation and cultural-diplomacy work of Serumpun Sarawak, with Borneo's thirty-four indigenous communities, from which the French-Borneo cuisine platform is growing.

France has twice knighted me; I carry both honours as obligation, not ornament.