The Aussie chef taking New York by storm

New York: Buddha Lo might be the most successful Australian in New York you’ve never heard of.

At just 34, the chef has worked in famous kitchens around the world, opened his own restaurant in Manhattan and won the popular American television competition Top Chef. Twice.

Last year, he earned his first Michelin star. Just four New York restaurants received their first star last year: two of them were run by Australians. The other was Bridges, owned by Melbourne native Sam Lawrence.

But in the photos from the award ceremony, Lo doesn’t look thrilled. “You can see in my eyes that I’m thinking about my second star,” he says.

That’s the ambition that propelled Lo from a kid cooking at his parents’ Chinese restaurant in Port Douglas, where he grew up, to Melbourne, London and New York, and ultimately to this corner of TriBeCa in Lower Manhattan, where he relocated his restaurant, Huso, early last year.

It has been a rapid rise. Lo left his Queensland home at 17, got a job at the two-hatted Matteo’s in Melbourne, then joined Raymond Capaldi’s Hare & Grace and became head chef at just 19. After that, he went to London and worked at the three Michelin-starred Restaurant Gordon Ramsay.

“It’s easy to get a job at Gordon’s, believe it or not; the hardest part is actually lasting a day there because they’re just constantly churning people,” Lo says.

“It’s brutal. We started at 5.30am and worked until about midnight or 1am. You’d come home, have four or five hours’ sleep, then go back out and do it again.”

Brutal, but formative. Lo returned to Melbourne and later accepted an offer for a restaurant trial in New York. When his wife, Rebekah, a pastry chef, fell in love with the city during a 30th birthday holiday, they decided to move. They both worked at Eleven Madison Park shortly after it was named the best restaurant in the world. Rebekah now helps to manage Huso.

Their restaurant began in 2019 inside a tiny caviar store, Marky’s, on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, where there was barely room for 12 seats and a Turbochef, “which is basically an oven that Subway uses to toast their bread”, Lo explains.

It was just starting to take off when COVID-19 struck, shuttering New York and putting everyone in restaurants – cooks, waitstaff, sommeliers – out of work. Lo, who worked for the caviar company, was fortunate to be paid throughout.

He received a message from Top Chef asking him to come on the show. After winning the US contest in 2022 and Top Chef: World All-Stars the following year, Lo was in his hotel room in post-pandemic France when he asked himself: “What’s next?”

The answer turned out to be moving Huso downtown to trendy TriBeCa, where it sits just blocks from Freedom Tower and the September 11 memorial. Behind a new outpost of Marky’s, it has 28 seats at street level, with an eight-person private dining room below.

The corner has become something of a “little Australia”. Next door to Lo’s restaurant is Laughing Man, the cafe co-founded by actor Hugh Jackman, which still turns out little slices of home: quality avocado toast, good coffee and breakfast burritos that won’t put you straight back to sleep.

Across the road, a Toby’s Estate Coffee opened a few months ago, replete with coffee-table books about Sydney and Melbourne on the shelf. A branch of Bluestone Lane, the cafe chain founded by former AFL player Nick Stone, is also nearby, as is Bondi Sushi (which is “Australian-inspired” but not actually Australian).

Within walking distance you’ll also find Chinese Tuxedo, The Tyger and Old Mates Pub, all run by Australia’s Eddy Buckingham, who has become a New York hospitality mainstay.

He is effusive in his praise for Lo. “He’s got one of the most elegant dining rooms and programs in the city right now,” Buckingham says. “His cooking is so composed, so elegant and so pretty on the plate – in a moment when that’s not the norm and standard in New York.”

Lo’s restaurant is not Australian, as such, and other than Penfolds on the wine list, you’ll find few explicit nods to home. The $US285 ($402), 15-course seasonal tasting menu traverses the world, from a tomato, goat’s curd and basil starter, to spot prawn, kohlrabi and gooseberry, and a dish of Iberico pork, Provençal vegetables and Nduja.

And yet, in its variety and quality, it is very Australian. “That’s what Australian food really is,” Lo says. “You don’t go there because it’s specifically French or it’s English, you just go there because you know the food’s great … It’s very much an Australian tasting menu, in that sense.”

Plus, Australian diners get Tim Tams at the end of their meal. “Only if you’re Australian. Because no one else is going to get it. It’s like a little secret.”

As for the room itself, it’s modern, spacious and light – the opposite of a lot of New York dining, which tends to cram tables into candlelit rooms with dark furnishings.

Pride of place on one wall is the custom installation Explosion, by London-based Italian artist Valéria Nascimento, made of 200 moveable porcelain pieces. There’s a piece of coral from Port Douglas, and Lo hopes to install a Ken Done work, too.

Actor and comedian Chris Rock has dined there, as has Google co-founder Sergey Brin and the crew from Amazon hit The Summer I Turned Pretty.

Taylor Swift has yet to pop by, seeming to prefer Via Carota up in the West Village. “It was one of our favourite restaurants before she came in. She really f—ed it,” Lo says. “Which is great for them. The food is great, so at least she has a good palate.”

Lo speaks like a Queenslander – unguarded and with a dose of profanity – but his attitude is classic New York. He is not shy about putting his achievements out there, and he is always looking for the next thing.

For the moment, the priority is a second Michelin star – the next award ceremony is due around November. He doesn’t want to live in New York forever but hopes to have several venues there.

Between his prodigious start, television appeal and restaurant success, it seems as if Buddha Lo never fails. He insists that’s not the case.

“I fail all the time. Failure is like my super spray,” he says.

He points out that Huso, despite its star, wasn’t nominated for best new restaurant at the prestigious James Beard Foundation Awards – a category ultimately won by a New York wine bar. (Lo was a semi-finalist for best chef, New York state.)

“I just have to take it,” Lo says. “But do I stop? No. I just keep going … I’ve always had to prove myself.”

Sometimes he is bemused by the lack of attention he receives back home. Fishing through the archives, it turns out the last time he was photographed for this masthead was in 2017.

“I don’t feel like chefs actually get the limelight that they deserve in Australia,” Lo says. “We have some of the best chefs on the planet, and nobody knows about it.”

Buckingham agrees, and believes that Lo will win the second Michelin star this year. “I don’t know if Australia appreciates the talent they’ve got there,” he says. “Australia doesn’t have a rising star. They actually have a bona fide star in Buddha.”

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