Sam Low

INFO

Name	Sam Low (he/him)
Born	1992
Country of Birth	Fiji
Place of Residence	Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland
Artform	Culinary arts
Decades Active	2010s, 2020s

ABOUT

Sam Low is an award-winning culinary creative whose work consciously expresses what it means to be queer and Chinese in Aotearoa.

Born in Suva, Fiji, Low grew up around food. His parents — who migrated from Zhongshan, Guangdong, in the 1980s — owned and ran a cafe and noodle factory, and he remembers stealing nibbles of the chicken butts from the roast chicken cabinet and “jumping on sacks of flour”. When he was eight years old, his family moved to West Auckland, where they ran a dairy and, later, took over Juan’s Polynesian Takeaway in Māngere, serving food like “roasted pigs’ heads, coconut cream, and taro leaf”. Low worked in the kitchen from the age of 15. “I worked the wok station, filling up the bain-maries with green beans and lamb belly stir-fries and Island-style Chinese chop suey.”

After high school, Low took on a food and beverage apprenticeship at SkyCity, where he first started working with coffee. “At the time, speciality coffee hadn’t really taken off in New Zealand but there was something about it that captured me…coffee opened up the world for me.” He went on to work at Atomic Coffee in Kingsland as a barista, developing his mastery of coffee and representing Aotearoa multiple times on the world stage. Low moved to Melbourne in 2015 to work as a coffee trainer for Code Black Coffee. That same year, he won the New Zealand Barista Championship, representing New Zealand at the World Coffee Championship in Ireland.

In 2017, Low moved back to Tāmaki Makaurau. In addition to working at Mojo Auckland, he started pop-up restaurant Da Lin, posting, “I'm sick of the negative stigma that Chinese food has in Western society, and that is why I'm excited to announce my latest project "Da Lin" a pop-up restaurant concept that showcases modern Chinese cooking and hopefully educate the diners on the complexities and understanding of Chinese cuisine.” He collaborated with other creatives through this project, including Ruby White and Judge Bao.

Low moved overseas in 2018, living in both Melbourne and Vancouver. While he was away, food became a way for him “to connect with the feeling of home… Through food I was able to have a larger dialogue with my parents.” He often describes food as his love language, a way to communicate not only with his parents, but his friends. “I’ve always used food to kind of bring them into my world and my life and my history.”

In 2020, he won a scholarship to study under chefs like David Chang at the Institute of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy, but the Covid-19 pandemic led to the course being cancelled. “I found myself in Melbourne in lockdown, kind of lost. So, I decided to go back home.” His arrival made national news for how he was meticulously re-plating his meals in managed isolation. That same year, he came out to his parents. “I painted the worst possible scenario in my head,” he said in an interview with Woman’s Day. “But I told them and I knew everything was OK because then they made me all my favourite things for dinner the next day – and in my family, we don't necessarily show understanding with words. It's food.”

In 2022, Low won MasterChef New Zealand. The grand finale centred around contestants’ ‘dream restaurant’, with Low serving pāua congee; steamed blue cod with braised daikon, ginger and spring onion relish, and rice; and kombu ice cream with nori meringue, cocoa nibs and matcha steamed cake. He dedicated his win to his younger self, “who was too scared and got bullied in school, who hadn’t had the courage to come out, and had to learn and own their heritage and culture and use it as strength.”

His cookbook Modern Chinese was released in 2023, with The Spinoff describing it as “an expression of what Chinese food, and identity, can mean in contemporary Aotearoa.” For Low, this book represents an attempt to be as accessible as possible, using ingredients found in major supermarkets. While the book reflects a range of regional dishes across China, it is anchored in the Cantonese dishes his parents cooked growing up. Low describes how it also embraces his queerness, both in the imagery — in which he consciously rejected notions of food masculinity or femininity, as well as orientalism — and in his approach to creating the recipes: “It’s about being respectful, but creating new, innovative pairings where I can, and about being bold.”