Vicky Lau

The Climb

Training across New York University and Le Cordon Bleu (2010) gave the work a formal base: design literacy on one side, kitchen discipline on the other. Before professional cooking, Vicky Lau worked as graphic designer at design agency, where composition, proportion, and presentation were daily tools. In a culinary role under Chef Sebastien Lepinoy at Cepage, those visual habits met the pace, repetition, and standards of the stove. The shift from design to cooking changed the medium, not the concern with structure. Texture, temperature, scent, and taste replaced paper, pixels, and layouts; the plate became the working surface, and the tasting menu became the sequence. In Hong Kong, the civic dimension of the work expanded through Vicky Lau’s role as Board Member at Feeding Hong Kong in Hong Kong (from 2021), placing service alongside restaurant craft. The current practice is spread across several formats without dropping the central concern for controlled composition. As founder and head chef of TATE Dining Room & Bar (since 2012) and founder of Mora (since 2021), Vicky Lau works between French technique, Chinese inspiration, and a designer’s attention to how a dish is seen, paced, and carried through service.

Today

At TATE Dining Room in Hong Kong, Chinese and French cooking are organized through the format of *Edible Stories*. Each menu begins with a common theme and develops through designed dishes, imagery, and plays on flavors and textures. The craft question is not only what each course tastes like, but how one course sets up the next and how the meal holds together as a complete experience. At TATE Dining Room & Bar, narrative structure can extend to the final sweets. A buzzing beehive presentation of petits fours inspired by bees and honey appears toward the end of her eight-course menu there, using the closing course as a tactile and playful piece of the larger construction. In Vicky Lau’s hands, sweetness is framed as part of the sequence rather than treated as an isolated finish. Ingredient focus defines MICHELIN Green Star Mora, where the cuisine is tofu-focused. The narrower frame gives space to restraint, variation, and texture around a single subject. The same cross-cultural design language also appears at Poem Patisserie in Sheung Wan, Hong Kong, a pastry shop specializing in Chinese-inspired mousse cakes and celebration cakes with French decadence. The wider operation includes Butler, a luxury catering service in Hong Kong, and Date by Tate, where Vicky Lau serves as Head Chef. Across tasting menu, tofu-focused cuisine, patisserie, catering, and Date by Tate, the through-line is exacting composition: French technique, Chinese inspiration, and a designer’s command of image and sequence.

Signature

The signature work sits in formats rather than a single fixed plate: Edible Stories, petits fours inspired by bees and honey, Chinese-inspired mousse cakes, and celebration cakes. In Vicky Lau’s practice, these show the same set of concerns at different scales—menu narrative, final-course precision, and pastry shaped by Chinese inspiration and French decadence.

In Their Words “I really do believe that everyone is born to play their role in life and for myself, I have always enjoyed creating beautiful things and I knew early on that this was my calling.”

Recognition

Vicky Lau has received Asia's 50 Best Restaurants: Best Female Chef in Asia (2015). Recognition has followed both the restaurant work and the visual discipline behind it: Two Michelin Stars for TATE Dining Room (2021), The Best Chef Food Art Award (2021), One Michelin Star for TATE Dining Room & Bar (2013), Chef of the Year (2023), Woman of Power (2021), and Asia’s Best Female Chef (2015). For the trade, these markers point to a sustained practice in which visual ideas are made operational through menu structure, technique, and service.