Second-Gen, First Course – Rising Stars to Watch

By Leigh O’Connor.

There’s a shift happening in kitchens across Australia and beyond - a rising chorus of second-generation Chefs, home cooks, pop-up rebels and TikTok storytellers who are transforming the flavours of their heritage into something fiercely personal.

They aren’t simply preserving tradition; they’re expanding it, bending it, seasoning it with the wildness of identity and the courage of reinvention.

Here are the names shaping the new frontier of culinary heritage:

Across professional kitchens, second-gen Chefs are shaking loose the old expectations of what ‘heritage cuisine’ must look like.

 

Brendan Pang, the Mauritian-Australian Chef known for his impossibly delicate dumplings, has become a quiet force. His cooking folds family memory into refined technique - sambals bright with nostalgia, noodles twisted with childhood stories. Brendan’s food feels like a conversation between generations.

 

Jerry Mai, Vietnamese-Cambodian-Australian Chef and owner of Annam, brings a bold, unapologetic edge to Vietnamese flavours. Smoked brisket banh mi, fiercely aromatic curries and broths deeply perfumed with star anise and charred onion - her dishes pay homage without playing safe.

Then there’s Khanh Ong, whose charismatic presence and contemporary Vietnamese cooking have turned him into one of the most-watched new voices in the country. His food is vibrant, gutsy and joyful - exactly the tone of a generation proud to cook from a place of layered identity.

 

These Chefs aren’t fusing cuisines. They are embodying them, evolving them and writing their own place in the culinary narrative.

Some of the most thrilling second-gen talent comes not from fine-dining kitchens, but from humble home environments - small stoves lit by big stories.

Jenny Lam, the Vietnamese-Australian home cook who charmed the nation with her debut cookbook and relatable approach to flavour, proves that home cooking can be revolutionary. Her dishes carry the comfort of family kitchens but are told through the lens of someone who grew up between cultures - and cooks boldly because of it.

 

Zhou - better known as ‘Wok with Zhou’ - has become a standout voice among Chinese-Australian home cooks, offering comforting, wildly craveable stir-fries and soups built on pantry ingredients and generations of intuition. Her style is unfussy, generous and anchored in memory.

These cooks represent the heartbeat of second-gen cuisine: personal, improvisational, deeply connected to where they’ve come from and the country they grew up in.

Heritage cooking has found a new stage: TikTok - and second-gen creators are using it to reclaim identity with humour, nostalgia, and millions of views.

 

Jon Kung, the Chinese-American Chef whose videos blend wok technique with cultural commentary, has become a global icon of diasporic cooking. His dishes are fiercely flavourful and deeply political - food as both comfort and reclamation.

 

 

Closer to home, Adrian Widjy (Adrian Eats) shares Indonesian-Australian dishes that spark both delight and hunger: sambal-slicked everything, crispy tempeh, noodles that glisten like gold. His videos feel like being welcomed into a friend’s kitchen at midnight.

While Liz Miu, the Burmese-Chinese-Australian creator behind Miu’s Tea, brings a gentle, nostalgic storytelling style to comfort dishes - from coconut noodle soups to glutinous rice snacks - each clip a love letter to her heritage.

 

Second-gen cuisine is not a trend - it is a reckoning. A reclamation. A celebration. These rising stars are proof that culinary heritage is not something preserved in amber; it’s something lived, stretched, challenged and shared.

This is only the first course.