Chef
Michael Chow
- Discipline
- Chef
Portrait of Michael Chow
i. Biography
Training in line, proportion, structure, and imagination starts with the schooling that leaves a mark on every later discipline. At Saint Martin's School of Arts and Hammersmith School of Building and Architecture, Michael Chow was formed in that overlap between making and thinking, where visual judgment and spatial control have equal weight. That background helps explain the breadth of his later work: painter, actor, architectural designer, and board member of The Broad. In each field, the throughline is control of form. The name shifts; the standard does not. Since 1968, Mr Chow has also operated as the fixed point in that range of practices. As co-founder and owner, Michael Chow has used the restaurant as a place where art, design, and culture meet in public view. The name Mr Chow has become attached to a recognizable point of view: ordered, lively, and built with attention to how a room reads as much as how a plate lands. The project has lasted because it is treated as an authored environment, not just a dining room.
Today
Ownership at the New York City restaurant is credited directly to Michael Chow, and that plain title carries the larger method with it. In a house that bears his name, ownership reads as editorial control: the shaping of taste, the setting of tone, the insistence that a restaurant is also an environment. The work is less about administration than about holding the line between identity and atmosphere.
Career - painter - actor - co-founder, Mr Chow, London (1968–present) - owner, Mr Chow (1968–present) - architectural designer - board member, The Broad, Los Angeles Education: Saint Martin's School of Arts; Hammersmith School of Building and Architecture
Signature
The signature dishes linked to Michael Chow are Chicken Satay, Ma Mignon, and Mr Chow Noodles. Taken together, they function like a compact restaurant lexicon: names that recur, register quickly, and help define what the house means to its regulars. Their role is not novelty. It is repetition with purpose, the kind that gives a dining room its memory and its rhythm. In Mr Chow, these dishes sit inside a larger system of presentation and recognition.
In Their Words “Very simple. All these trillions of details. When that is accumulated, it’s very powerful.” “How did I make the most beautiful restaurant in the world?”
Recognition
Michael Chow speaks about the restaurant in terms of assembly rather than accident. When he asks, "How did I make the most beautiful restaurant in the world?" the claim is anchored in process, not pose. The answer follows the same logic: "Very simple. All these trillions of details. When that is accumulated, it’s very powerful." The force of the work sits in accumulation, in the layering of choices, refinements, and adjustments until the whole carries more weight than any single part. That is also why Mr Chow remains closely tied to artful dining and a cultivated room language.
FAQ What is Michael Chow's current role? Michael Chow is Owner of Mr Chow. Where did Michael Chow train or study? Michael Chow trained at Saint Martin's School of Arts and Hammersmith School of Building and Architecture. What is Michael Chow known for? Beijing cuisine.
The Sunday letter
Get new profiles like Michael Chow every Sunday.
One email a week with the chefs, winemakers and artisans we have just profiled, and the places they run.
One email a week. Unsubscribe from any issue.
Explore
The Sunday letter
Get the next Made By profile in your inbox.
We send one email every Sunday morning with the people we profiled that week.
One email a week. Unsubscribe from any issue.