At 34, Kevin Zhu has already clocked more kitchen miles and career pivots than many chefs twice his age. He has been a farmhouse wok master, a fledgling apprentice scrubbing floors, a restaurateur-entrepreneur in northern China and the youngest Chinese executive chef in the Shangri-La hotel group’s history.Today, he stands at the helm of Lakeview Palace at Wynn Palace in Macau, quietly orchestrating one of the most intriguing culinary conversations in the Chinese-speaking world: a seamless, soulful marriage of Cantonese and Jiangnan gastronomy.But his path was never a straight line – it began with a decision that was not even his own.“I never dreamed of being a chef,” Zhu laughs, recalling when his father secretly enrolled him in a cooking school in Guangzhou when he was just a teenager. “He just came home one day and told me he signed me up. I had no idea.“We used to watch those New Oriental cooking school ads on TV together. He thought it would be a stable job – and maybe help me find a girlfriend.”Chef Kevin Zhu portions out Jiangnan double-boiled triple-layer duck soup at Lakeview Palace in Macau. Photo: Chloe Loung‘I quit after a week’