Live updates: The Age Good Food Guide Awards

She’s cooked at storied fine diners, she’s won gold in international cooking competitions, she represents Australia in our national culinary team.

Kimberly Tang has been a Young Chef of the Year finalist before, but in 2026, as we write in the Good Food Guide out on October 13, her application “was simply too strong to overlook”.

It’s the ultimate accolade for a chef aged 30 or under to win. Hopefuls are asked to submit a dish they are proud of. Tang, as our writers say, “filed an epic”, which she says she’s catching the last flight to Sydney tonight, to prepare it at a different young chef competition.

Here’s what she wrote:

This dish which I created for [Young Chef of the Year] is called ‘Before Sustainability Was a Trend’. Each of the eight elements reflects a different aspect of sustainability.

Two elements are vegan: a tofu fah, and achar and two are vegetarian: a mushroom parfait and XO with kueh pie tee, and a mooncake with four types of Australian and Asian yams. Four components focus on whole-animal utilisation using parts that are often discarded: ama ebi with elements made from off-cuts of prawn, and a chicken tail yakitori. Passing on knowledge from generation to generation is a key aspect of creating a sustainable future and that is what the bah kuh teh represents. I also wanted to use sustainable fisheries, local farmers and ethical Australian dairy suppliers such as St Davids from Gippsland.

Australian Indigenous ingredients were chosen as a way of reconciling the dish to the country of my upbringing, whilst the techniques and ideas are inspired by my Singaporean heritage and my family’s cultural knowledge.

The dish embraces sustainability throughout each element without treating it as an afterthought. The principles of sustainability, though a major conversation in food, were already part of Asian cooking techniques: waste little and respect the ingredient. Every component has intention, whether that be waste reduction, using the whole ingredient, supporting local producers or preserving traditions. I wanted to combine a Teishoku and Kaiseki meal which I enjoyed during my year in Japan, but also replicate a Chinese round table, on which each meal is shared and every dish is made to fulfil a texture, flavour, temperature and protein.

Though comprising numerous components, I wanted the dish to still have cohesion where the flavours are grounded in food from my upbringing and the presentation and execution speak to the chef I am. It attempts to blend the lines between these two worlds.

When she’s not cooking for the country, you’ll find her whipping up exemplary broken rice at Ca Com under last year’s Chef of the Year Thi Le. But next, she’s hopping on the last flight to Sydney for the San Pellegrino Young Chef competition, and hopes she takes it out.