A model-turned-chef-and-restaurateur, Esther Sham has been a big proponent of r é n’s ever since she found out about our social enterprise. Last month, she showed her support by leading one of our chef demos at Food Parc alongside her youngest son, cooking a stunning garlic pasta with our r é n eggs. After the session ended, we sat down with her for a chat about her journey transitioning from a model to one of Hong Kong’s most celebrated female chefs.

Esther grew up in the US and says food never played that significant a role in her life. She was studying fine arts when she entered the modelling industry, a result of being unable to make a living with her degree, she jokes. One day, she was offered a contract to work in Singapore, and it was there that her fascination with the culinary world was born.

“I had no family or friends in Singapore, so I spent a lot of my free time exploring the dining scene there instead, and it really opened my eyes to the world of food,” she recounts. “Around that time, I also started acquainting myself with fine dining, because when I grew up in the US, that wasn’t something I was ever exposed to. It was always more casual American food, like burgers and steaks. With fine dining, I realised food could be a form of art. It could make people happy, but at the same time you could also make a living out of it, so for me, it was win-win.”

Eventually, she came back to Hong Kong, continuing with her modelling career while dipping her toes into cooking for friends and family at home. Without a budget to go to culinary school, she learned as much as she could from cookbooks and online. After just a few months, she realised that cooking, not modelling, was her true passion, and so she took a leap of faith and created her very own private kitchen.

"I was working a lot of modelling jobs at the time, but I just felt miserable," she admits. "On the other side, I would be planning meals for my friends weeks ahead of time, and I'd be really excited the entire time leading up to it. I finally understood that I was miserable because I wasn't cooking as much as I wanted to. Cooking made me feel alive and full of energy.

“That said, even when I realised I wanted to turn it into a job, I knew I wanted to run a restaurant and not just work in a kitchen,” she adds. “I like working to my own schedule and I like the freedom of running my own business, so I never really considered working in a commercial kitchen. When I operated my private kitchen, I’d only take bookings up to three months in advance, because I wanted to be in control of my time and take vacations whenever I wanted to.”

The private kitchen ran for six years, and as her family and her personal relationships grew over that time, Esther found herself once again at a crossroads. Cooking day in, day out for guests was rewarding, but she also needed more time for herself, and thus Maison ES – her contemporary French-Asian restaurant in Wanchai – was born. 

“My career is important, of course, but I wouldn’t give up my entire personal life for it,” she shares. “I entered a different stage of my life when I couldn’t just work at my private kitchen every single night anymore, and so Maison ES was my solution. It allowed me to hire a team and work as an executive chef behind the scenes. To be honest, at the beginning it wasn’t much different; I was at the restaurant every single day for very long hours. But there was a period of illness that took me out of there for a while, and after that I learned to let go and trust my team. My head chef and my manager have been with me for 10 years now, and I really trust them. They’re great.”

As we reach the end of our conversation, her youngest son approaches her, and having just seen him in action during the chef demo, I ask if any of her children have shown interest in becoming chefs too. “My second-oldest son loves baking - he’d go through all my recipe books and try to bake all these different things,” she replies. “I taught him the fundamentals and the basics, and he just goes with it.”

But what about a career? What advice would she give to young and aspiring chefs like her son?

"When I first started doing this, I had saved enough money to support myself for a year," Esther recounts. "I told myself that it's important to chase your dreams, but it's also important to wake up when it's not happening in the way you had imagined, so I set myself a deadline. If it didn't work out after that year, I'd stop and move on.

"The truth is that turning a hobby into a job is not easy; it takes a lot of risk. I was fortunate, because I saw a niche in the market at the time, and I managed to succeed. Everything came together in a perfect storm. It's achievable, but it's not easy, so it's important to be realistic, and adjust your expectations along the way."