BANGKOK - For most chefs – certainly most chefs that I know – the ultimate career goal is to one day earn a Michelin star (or two or three) for their restaurants.

Of course, these are lofty dreams that do not often come true, because competition is stiff and not all chefs are going to make the cut.

After all, in Malaysia, there are currently only five restaurants with Michelin stars and the chefs behind these eateries have been in the industry for quite awhile.

So you can only imagine how 29-year-old Sarawakian chef Michelle Goh, the chef-patron at Mia Restaurant in Bangkok felt when she learnt that her restaurant, which she runs with her husband, fellow chef Pongcharn ‘Top’ Russell, had been awarded a Michelin star in December 2023.

“Um, I honestly couldn’t really tell you in words – I feel like the whole thing was a very, very surreal experience. When we first got the notification that we got a star, I think everyone was really in disbelief and shock – we didn’t really know if it was real or not,” Ms Goh said during a Google Meet interview.

“They sent out the notification via email before the award ceremony, so I felt like in between that time, it was very, very stressful because we didn’t know if it was really happening or if it was some kind of mistake or spam. Everyone was really worrying about it!”

Ms Goh is now the youngest Malaysian female chef to have a Michelin-starred restaurant and also the first Sarawakian chef to have bagged a Michelin star.

In so many ways though, the recognition awarded to Goh is a long time coming. Especially when you consider that she wanted to be a chef from the tender age of eight!

Growing up

Ms Goh grew up in Kuching, Sarawak, and spent most of her formative years with her grandparents. She says it was both her paternal and maternal grandmother who sparked her initial interest in cooking.

“From a very young age, I was helping my grandmothers in the kitchen just because both my grandmothers are very good cooks,” she said.

“And at the time, they would kind of let me help out with stirring the wok or really, really simple things like peeling vegetables, so that is how I started cooking.”

The turning point that tipped a beloved hobby into a potential career happened when Ms Goh was just eight years old and was due in large part to British celebrity chef Jamie Oliver.

“When I was eight, I was watching a Jamie Oliver cooking show called Oliver’s Twist and he was making fish and chips and it was a very casual dish but the way he made it and spoke about it really changed my perspective on what food could be,” said Ms Goh.

“That is when I realised that I wanted to become a chef.”

While most young children typically profess to want to do something when they are young only to change their minds fairly dramatically when they get older, Ms Goh was steadfast in her decision. Her heart was set on becoming a chef and she never wavered.

In fact when she was 15, she tried to convince her parents to let her quit secondary school so she could go to culinary school – to no avail.

At 18, she finally fulfilled her childhood ambition when she enrolled at Le Cordon Bleu in Sydney, Australia.

“I think that a lot of my life, I felt a little bit like an outcast, just because I was one of the very few people who knew what I wanted to do, so it made it a little bit difficult to go through the motions of doing other things when I already knew what I wanted to do,” she said.

“So when I first moved to Sydney, it was that feeling of ‘Oh, I finally belong!’ because everyone kind of shared the same passion and we all had the same goal.”

Career trajectory

While she was studying in Australia, Ms Goh made it her mission to gain as much work experience as she could and eventually ended up earning her stripes at renowned Australian eateries like the three-hatted (the Australian equivalent of three Michelin stars) Sydney culinary institution Rockpool.

On her days off, Ms Goh spent her time interning with award-winning Australian pastry chef Anna Polyviou, learning how to hone her pastry skills.

After finishing her studies, Ms Goh headed to Singapore, where she worked for acclaimed chef Jason Atherton at his famed eatery Pollen (now rebranded to Marguerite).

It was there that she met her now-husband Pongcharn, better known as Top.

Ms Goh said her husband was a sous chef at Pollen and she was working in the pastry kitchen.

She added that her restaurant was massive and there were many staff members that she did not know of her husband’s existence in her first six months there as they were always rostered to work at different times.

One day, however, they happened to be rostered on the same shift and they met each other at the changing room.

“Top was getting dressed in the changing room, but the lights were broken so I didn’t even realise someone was there. I was making a sourdough starter but the restaurant was really cold so I was just going to put it in my locker to keep it warm and he just happened to be there in his underwear – just watching me put sourdough in my locker,” she said.

“So that’s how we met each other. He was like ‘This girl is really weird’ and I was like ‘Yeah!’” she says, laughing at the recollection.

The two began dating, but Mr Top dreamt of returning to Thailand and Ms Goh was young and up for an adventure, so she threw caution to the wind and went to Thailand with him.

Thai dreams

In Thailand, Ms Goh found at job at the renowned two Michelin-starred German eatery Suhring in Bangkok, where she was put in charge of the pastry section at the tender age of 23.

After two years of plying her craft there, Ms Goh and Mr Top both left their jobs and found themselves at a loose end.

With time on their hands, they put together a pop-up series. As luck would have it, a Frenchman who was once a chef chanced upon their pop-up and offered them an opportunity to open their own restaurant.

And that is how Mia was born in 2019 in Bangkok. At first the restaurant was meant to be a casual dining eatery, but then the Covid-19 pandemic happened and Goh and Top had to re-think their entire strategy.

When Covid-19 hit, the duo closed Mia for nine months and it became quite difficult and they was unable to make ends meet with food deliveries.

“We had to decide if we wanted to reopen Mia with the same casual concept or we wanted to change concepts and do something completely different. So we decided that as a collective, we wanted to give fine-dining a shot, because both Top and myself – our background and experience is in fine-dining – so we just decided to change,” Ms Goh said.

“Which means that we did renovations, we upgraded our silverware, tableware – it was a huge operation and we opened after Covid as a fine-dining restaurant. And after we had done that, it was very, very successful, so the owners decided to make Top and I partners in the restaurant.”

Mia’s growth

Mia is a modern European restaurant in Bangkok that harnesses Top and Goh’s French culinary training backgrounds and fine-dining experience and distills it into an approachable dining experience.

“So I think that the way we both approach food at Mia is we want to make food that we want to eat – tasty food and food that is approachable – which basically means if I were to bring a foodie here, they would enjoy the food but if I were to bring my mum (and she knows nothing about food), she would also enjoy herself,” Ms Goh added.

“So for us, it’s really important to find a balance between delicious and interesting.”

Ms Goh and Mr Top also have entirely different ways of working which complement each other perfectly in a restaurant environment and has helped create a thriving ecosystem for their team.

“Top is very creative and spontaneous and I am more disciplined in terms of following a recipe better and I am really good at implementing SOP and things like that,” she shared.

“I think with a restaurant, you kind of need a ‘Good cop, bad cop’ kind of thing, so it’s kind of good because all the things that Top is bad at like paperwork, etc, I am really good at, whereas he knows how to read people really well and he knows how to manage staff, so I think because of that, we work really well.”

At Mia, the seasonal menu focuses on sourcing the best produce in Thailand while utilising a creative approach to European flavours.

On the menu are a range of items that have become signature dishes at Mia including Cocollos oyster with passionfruit and homemade chilli oil and smoked eel chawanmushi with bone marrow and ikura.

But Goh says the signature dish that she is most proud of is Mia’s cereal bowl, which is an ode to her Sarawakian roots.

“I think one of the most popular dishes on our menu is called the Mia cereal bowl that highlights three main ingredients, namely Milo, milk and corn. This one is quite close to my heart because it is inspired by a Malaysian dish.

In Kuching, we have an ais kacang flavour called Milo jagung, so it is basically ice kacang covered in evaporated milk, Milo powder and tinned corn, so I wanted to take that idea and transform it into a dessert.

“Because if you think about it, Milo, milk and corn, they are all like breakfast ingredients, so I wanted to make a breakfast-inspired dish, so we called it a cereal bowl,” Ms Goh added.

Since Mia’s early days, Ms Goh has gone from strength to strength and it is little surprise that her pastry skills have earned her numerous accolades, including being recognised by the Michelin Guide as one of Asia’s top pastry chefs.

Championing women’s advancement in restaurants

Ms Goh said restaurant kitchens were often very male-dominated and female participation was typically low in the past.

Over the years, restaurant culture has changed and she shared that many restaurants now do not practise the abusive yelling and swearing that made the kitchen such an unwelcome place for many women.

At Mia, talented women are celebrated and championed and Ms Goh said the restaurant now has an 85 per cent female workforce, which is highly unusual in the restaurant industry.

Ms Goh hopes to pave the way for more women to join top restaurants by leading by example.

“When we first opened, everyone in the kitchen was male and we only had two female chefs and then over time, I just felt like the women were actually doing better than the men and slowly it kind of turned into 85 per cent women in the kitchen and the service team,” she said.

Ms Goh and Mr Top also both aspire to ensure that their restaurant is a teaching restaurant.

As such, the chefs and the service crew are given the opportunity to learn how to do things as opposed to being expected to know everything when they arrive and then having to muddle their way through when they do not know something.

This is especially important to Ms Goh because for many of their employees, this is their first job.

“I think that for Top and myself, we prioritise more learning and knowledge,” she said, adding that wants people who enter their kitchen to learn and take away something.

“When they move on to their next place, they are able to say ‘oh, I learnt all this at Mia’.”

Moving forward

Ms Goh said she and Mr Top were over-the-moon about earning their first Michelin star.

“After the announcement, business has been really good. People who didn’t know about us have now found out about us, so we are consistently busy and I think it has been a great morale boost for the staff in general,” she added.

The lustre of their first star has not worn off yet, but Mr Top and Ms Goh are already on to their next goal - to make Mia even better and perhaps even secure a second Michelin star.

After that, Ms Goh says the sky is the limit in terms of what they can do, even individually.

“I have thought about it and maybe in the future I would like to open a very small casual bakery shop selling things that I like to eat for a very affordable price. I am not sure if Top wants to be involved in this, so it might be just for me,” she shared.

“As for Top, he wants to do a Thai barbecue and that is something that I don’t really have any interest in, so the options are endless for both of us in terms of branching out.” THE STAR/ASIA NEWS NETWORK