Born into an influential culinary family, Cedric Vongerichten has carved out a legacy all his own – especially with Indonesian flavours.
Contrary to what you might imagine – born in Bangkok, carried to New York by the tides of my father’s work – my earliest memories of kitchens are not heroic or cinematic. They are fragments: the hiss of oil in a worn pan, the fragrance of garlic clinging to my fingertips, the quiet rhythm of someone chopping just beyond my sight. These moments were not staged for grandeur; they simply existed, half-remembered, yet indelible.
I never set out to become a chef to fulfil family expectations or cultural duty. In truth, no one in my family urged me toward the stove. What drew me in was something quieter, more insistent: curiosity. I wanted to understand flavour, to chase how a simple bite could open a memory, shift a mood, or soften even the hardest conversation. Cooking, I would discover, was less about technique and more about what it awakened in people – the way it connected us, wordlessly, across time and distance.
Young and restless
At only 17, I found myself in my first full kitchen job – of all places – in the Bahamas. It wasn’t glamour I was after, but possibility. From there, I sought range, chasing stages in some of the world’s most storied kitchens: The Berkeley in London, the Mandarin Oriental in Hong Kong, and, in Barcelona, the hallowed grounds of El Bulli.
There, I discovered just how far ideas could be stretched, bent, reshaped, and still find harmony on a plate. Those years mattered deeply, but my truest lesson was subtler: knowing when to hold back. Technique, I came to understand, is not a showpiece but a quiet tool, most powerful when it disappears into the experience.
Hunger for knowledge carried me to the Culinary Institute of America, and soon after, back to New York – a return that felt both inevitable and urgent. I worked in some of my father’s restaurants, learning not only kitchen but also the weight of legacy. My first real breakthrough came at Perry St., as chef de cuisine, where I learned to write food like sentences: clear in the dining room, fluid in the rush of service, able to speak without words to those willing to listen.
Another world
Indonesia entered my life through Ochi Latjuba, a classmate at the CIA who would later become my partner in both life and business. With her came a new language of flavours – smoke and spice, herbs that sang bright and wild, heat that lingered long after the last bite. In 2018, together with my father, we opened Vong Kitchen and Le Burger in Jakarta. Those projects were bridges: between the cities I had known and the archipelago I was only beginning to understand, between the familiar cadence of New York kitchens and the unfolding vocabulary of Indonesian taste.
Yet as a New Yorker, the pull of home was inevitable. Back in SoHo, we opened Wayan, carving out a space where Indonesian flavours could settle into the frame of the food I had grown up cooking. Satay brushed with charcoal smoke, seafood laced with spice pastes, herbs so fresh they seemed alive – all approached with a quiet restraint, as if to let their voices rise on their own.
Soon after came Ma•dé in Nolita. Its name, meaning ‘second-born’ in Balinese, felt prophetic: a younger sibling, spirited and independent, with a personality all its own. Here we leaned into coastal lightness – crisp vegetables, bright acids, plates designed to be shared in the centre of the table, laughter spilling over as freely as the food.
Last winter, we carried the story into the mountains, opening Wayan Aspen. Outside, snow and silence; inside, a wood fire casting warmth against Indonesian textures woven into the room. The pantry at altitude required improvisation, but the soul of the cooking remained the same: warmth, texture, clarity – a thread stretched but never broken.
Now, my days are divided between New York and the Middle East, where I lead Maritime at The Jeddah EDITION. There, the brief is contemporary French-Asian, but always with a line drawn back to the market – to what is fresh, what is alive, what speaks of place.
Days of our lives
Ochi and I cook together, and we travel whenever we can. On those journeys, two rituals never change: I wander into markets, and I carry a notebook. People often ask how travel finds its way onto the plate. Sometimes it is immediate – a krupuk I’ve been longing for, a chili that refuses to be forgotten – slipped directly into a dish. Other times it lingers, slow and patient, like the curl of smoke rising from a beachside grill in Bali, or the quiet way a banana leaf steams fish, holding the flavour close instead of washing it away.
The kitchen has its own simple commandments: taste constantly, temper fire with acid, keep sweetness from wandering too far, treat texture as reverently as flavour. And above all, write menus that the line can trust – sentences they can speak fluently in the language of service. Travel, though, whispers its own lessons: sit in markets, watch the hands that season food at home, pay attention to the unspoken. It is in the small adjustments – how a cook bends to weather, to the hour of the day, or to the people gathered at the table – that context reveals itself. A good dish, like a good story, always knows where it belongs.
Opening restaurants has taught me another truth: a room is not a statement, but a promise. In SoHo, teak and plants set a stillness that lets sharper flavours cut clean. In snowy Aspen, a fireplace calls for dishes that lean into its warmth, carrying smoke and comfort. And in Jeddah, where the marina stretches wide, the food must answer with clarity, with salt, with light. As chefs, we do not own the places where we cook. We are only guests, borrowing rooms for a while, leaving behind what we can before passing them on to others.
For more information about Cedric and his global ventures, visit cvrestaurantgroup.com or Instagram at @cedvongerichten