Gabriel Choi

Short bio

Gabriel Choi is a Sydney private chef who found his calling the brave way — trading a career in engineering for the kitchen, and never looking back. Driven by the belief that there’s no limit to creativity in cooking, he builds his food on quality, carefully sourced produce and a simple goal: to bring people together and send everyone home well fed and smiling.

Bio

Gabriel Choi came to cooking by a road less travelled. He started out studying electrical engineering — a world away from the kitchen — before taking a genuine leap of faith into an entirely new field. It wasn’t easy at first, but he persevered, and somewhere along the way the challenge turned into a real love. That willingness to back himself and start again still defines the way he cooks today.

What won him over was everything that happens around a plate of food: the creativity, the dynamic energy of a working kitchen, and above all the joy of cooking for other people. For Gabriel, making a dish that feeds someone and brings a smile is an achievement unlike any other — one he says he couldn’t have found anywhere else. He loves that cooking has no ceiling on creativity, and that a good meal genuinely brings people together.

At the heart of his cooking is a deep respect for good ingredients. Gabriel believes a dish is only ever as good as what goes into it — he’ll seek out organic, free-range produce from animals that have lived a good life, because he knows that care translates directly into flavour and nourishment on the plate. It’s a produce-first approach that keeps his food honest, seasonal and full of character.

Ask him for a favourite and the answer is wonderfully unpretentious: a really good roast chicken. He’ll source a quality free-range bird and roast it over vegetables and potatoes so the juices and butter drip down and build layer after layer of flavour — a single, generous dish that easily feeds the whole table. It’s a neat snapshot of how he thinks: let great produce shine, keep it comforting, and make it something people want to gather around.

Working as a private chef in Sydney, Gabriel brings that same care to a menu built around his clients — spanning modern Australian cooking with Asian and Japanese-inspired touches, always led by the best produce he can find. Drawing inspiration from the great chefs who shaped him, his aim never changes: creative, nourishing food that brings people together and leaves a smile long after the last bite.