Kylie Kwong Biography
Kylie Kwong is an Australian television chef, author, television presenter and restaurateur. As a chef, restaurateur, author and television presenter, she passionately believe that growing and cooking food helps to create a sense of wellbeing.
Kylie Kwong Age
Kwong was born on October 31, 1969 in Sydney, Australia. She is 49 years old as of 2018.
Kylie Kwong Early Life And Education
Kwong attended Epping North Public School and Cheltenham Girls High School. As a third-generation Chinese Australian, she learned the fundamentals of Cantonese cooking by her mother’s side. She undertook much of her apprenticeship at Neil Perry’s Rockpool and Wockpool, and later at Restaurant Manfredi.
Kylie Kwong Career
Kwong opened her first restaurant, Billy Kwong, in the Sydney suburb of Surry Hills. ‘Billy’ in the restaurant’s name derives, not from the name of a family member, but from the partnership with Sydney celebrity chef Bill Granger under which the restaurant was founded. Kwong later became the sole owner of the restaurant under the original name. The current Billy Kwong Potts Point is co-owned with Sydney and Hong Kong chef and restaurateur Andrew Cibej and seismologist and businessman David King.
The restaurant made a commitment to use organic and biodynamic food: “We now use only organic and biodynamic fruit and vegetables, poultry, meat and noodles. All the soy sauces, sugar, vinegar and oils we flavour our food with are organic, and we serve Fair Trade tea, coffee and chocolate.” The restaurant made this transition in 2005.
Kwong is quoted as saying “I wanted my work and social life to reflect my Buddhism. Offering my customers healthy, life-giving, precious food is the best way for me to help them. Whether it’s my books, restaurant or TV show, I’ll always ask, Is this sustainable? Is this about uplifting and elevating the energy rather than depleting?”.
Billy Kwong received the inaugural Sustainability Award in 2009 from the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide, in recognition of Kwong’s environmental initiatives, including the option for diners to donate to a renewable energy credits program, purchased from a wind farm in the Chinese province of Hebei. The restaurant serves only filtered Sydney tap water, offering no bottled water.
Kylie Kwong photo
At a public lecture by the Dalai Lama on 3 December 2009 at the Sydney Entertainment Centre, Kwong acted as master of ceremonies.
On 1 October 2011, Kwong’s first ever tableware range went on sale in Oxfam shops around Australia. The range, which includes a soup bowl and rice bowl with matching plates, soup spoon, teapot, teacup and coffee cup, is a joint project with Oxfam Australia and is hand-crafted by one of Oxfam’s fair trade producer partners in Vietnam, Mai Vietnamese Handicrafts.
Kylie Kwong Television And Books
In 2003, Kylie Kwong: Cooking with Heart and Soul was published by Penguin Viking/ABC Books in October 2003 to coincide with her first TV series which was screened on the ABC at the same time. Her first cookbook Kylie Kwong: Recipes and Stories was published by Penguin in April 2003. The television series was screened both on the Australian ABC, but also on Foxtel, on the LifeStyle Channel, and on Discovery Home in the United States.
In late 2001, the LifeStyle Channel released a statement revealing that a second Kylie Kwong series would be released. The 6 part television series would be named Kylie Kwong: Simply Magic. This series was then televised in January 2006 on the LifeStyle Channel and later in 2006 on Discovery Home. A new Kylie Kwong book was released in 2006 under the name of Simple Chinese Cooking. The book aims to make Chinese cooking as easy as possible, with every recipe accompanied by a full-page colour photograph.
A third series to accompany her new book My China: Stories and Recipes from My Homeland will be shown on UKTV Food in Summer 2008.
In 2012 she appeared as a guest chef in the fourth series of MasterChef Australia. She returned as a guest judge in the sixth series and guest mentor in the eighth series.
She appeared on Anh’s Brush with Fame 17 July 2019.
Kylie Kwong Husband
Kwong’s long-time partner is Australian mononymous artist Nell. Kwong and Nell married on 17 March 2019.
Kylie Kwong Publications
To date, Kwong has released five books, all of which share her love of cooking and explore many different facets of Chinese culture and cuisine. In order of release, these include:
- Kylie Kwong: Recipes And Stories – 2003 – 184 pages. ISBN 978-0-670-91118-9
- Heart and Soul – 2003 – 204 pages. ISBN 978-0-670-04154-1
- Simple Chinese Cooking – 2007 – 313 pages. ISBN 978-0-670-03848-0
- My China: A Feast for All the Senses – 2007 – 482 pages. ISBN 978-0-670-01879-6
- My China: Stories and Recipes from My Homeland – 2008 – 496 pages. ISBN 978-0-00-727104-7
- Story in Growing up Asian in Australia – 2008
Kylie Kwong Billy Kwong
Kylie Kwong has announced her celebrated Potts Point restaurant Billy Kwong will permanently close in the next three to five months.
The chef and restaurateur is set to open a small, casual eatery from as early as July.
“I turn 50 this year and in order to mark the milestone I wanted to take a different direction in my life,” Kwong said.
“I want to spend more time collaborating with partners and mentors locally and around the world.
“A commercial kitchen will always be a part of my life, however. I’ll always enjoy serving people.”
Details of the new eatery are yet to be confirmed but the venture will focus on native, organic and local ingredients, Kwong said.
“We don’t quite know what it will look like yet and we haven’t found a site,” she said. “What I do know is that it’s still going to have the DNA of Billy Kwong.”
Billy Kwong opened in Surry Hills in May 2000 serving contemporary Chinese food.
In 2013, Kwong began incorporating Australian bush ingredients into her cooking and in late 2014 the restaurant relocated to a larger site in Potts Point.
With the new site came a collaborative focus, which included working with community gardens in the neighbourhood that supplied produce for the kitchen.
Closure of the influential restaurant is a major loss for Australia’s hospitality sector but Kwong said the new direction would allow her to devote more time to social enterprises and other industry projects.
“The new eatery will still very much have a collaborative focus – in fact, that focus is only going to intensify,” she said.
Kwong said closing Billy Kwong – where she still writes the menus every day by hand – will let her travel to events such as the Rene Redzepi-founded MAD symposium in Copenhagen “and have meaningful conversations about serious global issues”.
“I can then bring those concepts and ideas back to Australia and localise them, whether it’s the way we deliver them in our daily food or a topic we discuss at our MAD Mondays Sydney talks I curate.”
Kwong is now looking for a new tenant to take over the Billy Kwong site on Macleay Street.
“I feel really grateful that I’ve had a successful 19 years with such a special place,” she said.
“It has touched the lives of many people, and the staff and I are very proud of it.”
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