Top chefs from around the world tell Chong Seow Wei some of their juiciest, meatiest, and downright unforgettable experiences as private chefs for the day.

If you’re powerful, rich and famous, you might be able to skip the wait list and get a celebrity or Michelin-starred chef to cook in your kitchen. Top chefs from around the world tell Chong Seow Wei some of their juiciest, meatiest, and downright unforgettable experiences as private chefs for the day.


 Gaggan Anand

Gaggan, Bangkok

“In 2012, Nita and Isha Ambani, the wife and daughter of India’s richest man Mukesh Ambani, visited my restaurant in Bangkok. After trying our dishes, they invited us to cook for their housewarming party at their US$1b, 27-storey private skyscraper home, Antilia, in South Mumbai. They flew me and my entire team of 20 from Bangkok, and we cooked 26 courses for 30 guests. We spent 7,000 just on white truffles, and the total cost of the party was at least US$3,500 per guest. The guest list of Bollywood celebrities and billionaires who attended would be difficult to be replicated by anyone. At the end of the evening, Mukesh’s mother asked if we could teach her team of personal chefs to cook the way we did. That night, I also received offers from five different billionaires to open a restaurant for each of them, but I rejected them all. I don’t want to work for someone and never will.”


Hidemasa Yamamoto

Hide Yamamoto, Singapore

“A good friend of mine, who is also the brother-in-law of Arnold Schwarzenegger, once asked me to prepare a birthday meal for his father Sargent Shriver at their family home. It was a nine-course meal for 10 members of the family, with caviar, foie gras, and the like. After dinner, I found out that most of the family didn’t have a palate for these types of food! One even asked, ‘What was that we ate?’ When my friend’s mother Eunice Kennedy Shriver asked how much I was charging for the meal and I replied $100 per person, which was a decent price considering the ingredients we used, she shocked me by exclaiming, ‘Wow! You’re charging me that much?’ My friend later told me that someone else usually takes the bill for his parents. On another occasion, I was preparing a birthday dinner for King Abdullah II of Jordan at his palace. After dinner, a head of the palace said to me, ‘By the way, for tomorrow’s lunch…’ The King’s uncle, Prince Hassan bin Talal, wanted us to cook for him and seven others at his own palace the next day. As I had not planned for that, I told him I was already due to fly back to Singapore at 2pm. To that, he replied seriously, “If your airplane waits for you, can you stay?” The next day, they delayed my Emirates flight for an hour and the prince got his lunch.”


André Chiang

Restaurant André, Singapore

“Before our restaurant officially opened, the office of the late Lee Kuan Yew contacted us to organise a dinner for him and 19 other guests. The menu I crafted for them was our restaurant’s very first menu. I consulted with Mr Lee’s doctor to find out if he had any dietary restrictions, but was told to cook as I liked and that he would eat and drink anything. During the dinner, I got to speak with Mr Lee and he told me that the building our restaurant is in, at 41 Bukit Pasoh Road, used to be the very office of his first law firm. While we’ve renovated almost everything of it, I’ve kept the floors untouched no matter how much they creak, to hold on to that bit of heritage and history.”


Jason Atherton

The Social Company 
(includes Pollen Street Social, London, and Pollen, Singapore)

“I was cooking a surprise 50th birthday meal for a wealthy businesswoman on a yacht in the Bahamas years ago. When I arrived onto this yacht, just me and my knives, I wasn’t expecting the minute size of the kitchen, lack of facilities or the heat below deck! Everyone was expecting a Michelin-starred meal, but sourcing for the right ingredients and plating up for a party of 60 in 40°C heat was one of the hardest things I’ve done. At one stage, the birthday gal came down to the kitchen, and I had to hide in a nearby closet because her husband had booked me to cook for her dinner as a surprise!”


 Anthony Genovese

Il Pagliaccio, Rome

“About 15 years ago, the famous Spanish opera singer Plácido Domingo visited our restaurant when wewere just starting out. Two days before he came, he had made a special request for a whale dish, which we don’t have on our menu. He pleaded with us to do it for him and I said we’d try, because getting the required ingredients in two days wasn’t easy. We managed to get the meat in time from a friend of a friend, and prepared it in a light, Italian way with olive oil, fresh herbs and lemon. Plácido was a charming guy and he wrote me a lovely thank-you letter after the meal, which I still have with me. I’ve gotten a lot of strange requests since then, too.”


Luke Mangan

Luke Mangan Group 
(includes Glass, Sydney and Salt Grill & Sky Bar, Singapore)

“I had the pleasure of cooking for US president Bill Clinton back in 2001 when he visited Auckland as part of his tour of Australia and New Zealand. He stayed at the Hilton Auckland, where at that time I was consulting chef for the hotel’s restaurant, then called White. I was invited to have private drinks with him after he finished dinner one day. I had always wanted to meet him and had all these things I wanted to say to him, but when I went up to shake his hand, I had stage fright! I stood there and no words came out of my mouth—how embarrassing! I think that’s what you’d call feeling star-struck.”


Hemant Oberoi

Taj Group of Hotels, India

“Hillary Clinton visited our hotel, The Taj Mahal Palace, in Mumbai. She was recovering from a fractured hand at that time, and at one point she asked me to follow her and held onto my arm. Someone happened to take a picture of her doing that and I only saw the shot when the US ambassador to India sent it to me. He even jokingly told me, ‘Lucky guy’.  The same situation happened again when she visited our hotel in New Delhi. My managing director requested that I go over to supervise the kitchen there, but when I got there, there was such strict security that I had difficulty getting into the hotel. At that same time, Hillary was climbing up the hotel stairs when she saw me, and said, ‘Come, come, come’, and held onto my arm again. Someone else took a photo of that moment as well. On another morning at our hotel in Mumbai, we were in a guest room showing Hillary the sea. She asked if the sea level was always this high at high tide, and I told her that we’ve had occasions when the waves had hit the first floor of our hotel and water got through windows. I joked that that’s how we get our fresh fish!”  


Sebastien Lepinoy

Les Amis Group, Singapore

“A memorable meal I did was for ex-French president Nicholas Sarkozy in 2005, when he was in town for an official visit. I was young back then and executive chef at a restaurant popular with politicians as it was close to the parliament house. Being able to prepare a meal for the president was a dream, but it was also stressful. After the meal, we chatted and talked business for a bit; we talked about salary, how business and life was like for an expat in Ukraine, and the amount of income tax I had to pay. I also took a picture with him, which I sent my mom, and remember how proud she was to see it. If there were someone else I’d like to cook for, dead or alive, it would be Auguste Escoffier, because he created French cuisine. I want to show him how I’m able to cook his dishes, which are different and not easy to execute. I once created an oyster soufflé with black truffle dish, which he inspired.”


Mitsuru Konishi

Wagyu Takumi

“We have a regular customer, who’s a famous Hong Kong actor. I prefer to keep anonymous, but will say that he’s a quiet person but very friendly. He doesn’t talk much, only smiling all the time, which is quite different from the impression I had of him from watching his movies. Similarly, he has also received the Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Mérite from the French government for his commitment in bringing together the cultures of France and Hong Kong a few months earlier than me. There was another time I cooked for Derrek Gerald Lee, a famous Major League Baseball outfielder who’s since retired. He came to the restaurant when he visited Hong Kong. We talked about baseball, which he started playing at six and I, too, played when I was younger. While we didn’t manage to schedule a day to bat together one day, the conversation reminded me of the happiness I felt while playing baseball with my teammates.”