From Palate to Decision-Making: Andre Koo’s Culinary Vision

He showed an unusual sensitivity to food from an early age. One childhood summer memory remains vivid. Living in Tianmu, on a sweltering afternoon when the heat killed his appetite, the kitchen steward noticed and offered a simple solution: loosen a bowl of white rice, add brown sugar syrup and ice, mix it lightly, and it became a cooling sweet. Looking back years later, he realised this may well have been the most primitive form of Mi Tai Mu (Thick Rice Noodles)

“You remember it because it’s so grounded,” he laughs. That grounding is precisely why he holds street food in such high regard. In his mind, there is only one standard: whether it is made with integrity. Is the rice in a zongzi properly cooked through? Has the braised pork been stewed long enough? These details reveal themselves the moment food touches the palate.

This instinct for fundamentals comes from years of tasting, bite by bite. The same standard applies whether he is judging French fine dining or Japanese cuisine.

That sensory intuition also extends to wine. Between 2012 and 2014, he made annual trips to Burgundy to visit Domaine Prieuré Roch, a cult winery known among collectors as “knife-edge wine.” At the time, the estate had yet to become a global obsession. What drew him was Henri-Frédéric Roch’s near-obsessive belief in terroir. A co-owner of DRC, Roch chose to return to minimal-intervention winemaking at his own domaine, favouring low yields and little embellishment. The wines, often wild yet strikingly transparent, led many Burgundian producers to realise that Pinot Noir could be this pure and unforgettable.

“That kind of aroma in wine is something you’ll never find in perfume,” Koo says.

That shared trust eventually led to a formal collaboration in 2015. Only after Roch’s passing did the world fully recognise the value of these bottles. It is a kind of sensory memory that can only be understood by having lived through it.

This devotion to flavour also shapes his daily rituals. In the morning, he brews coffee with a siphon. Flames flicker beneath the glass vessel as water rises slowly and time stretches. “My wife says that cup of coffee is the moment she looks forward to most each day,” he says lightly, revealing a quiet willingness to spend time for others.

When the topic turns to coffee, he poses a question of his own: what is coffee? “It’s a fruit,” he answers. From cherry-like berries through fermentation, drying, and roasting, it eventually becomes what we drink. That is why the first sip matters. Clear the mind and resist analysing too soon. He describes drinking JLK coffee, one of his own brands, as “walking into an ancient cypress forest in Alishan, mist rushing toward you. Clean, airy, with the breath of the mountains.”

He once favoured Blue Mountain beans and was well versed in Kenyan and Ethiopian profiles, but it was only after encountering Alishan that he realised Taiwan holds flavours that exist nowhere else. Bright fruit leads, the structure is clean, and as the cup cools, a tea-like finish emerges. “Good coffee shows its true character when it cools,” he says. “That’s when you know whether the beans are really any good.”

In recent years, Andre Koo’s approach to dining has shifted away from simply opening new restaurants toward building an ecosystem designed to operate over the long term. He is candid about today’s biggest challenge: not cost, but people. Part-time staff are hard to find, chefs are leaving the industry, and sommeliers are facing a serious talent gap—an issue shared by operators across the board.

His response is to give talent a larger stage, rather than fragmenting resources into isolated operations. This year’s core project sees a full upgrade of his French restaurant SENS, brought together with a brand-new omakase-style Japanese restaurant and a members-first bar, all housed within the same building. The layout encourages a natural flow: a drink before dinner, a return to the bar afterward, extending the rhythm of the evening rather than ending it abruptly.

Staffing follows the same integrated logic. Sommeliers are no longer assigned to a single cuisine but are expected to understand both French and Japanese cooking, wine and sake alike. The bar, too, moves away from a fixed lineup, adopting a curatorial model that combines resident bartenders with regular guest shifts by internationally renowned mixologists. These rotating presences bring fresh energy to the space while helping balance crowd flow, music, and overall tempo.

The idea stems from his observations of Asian cities, particularly Tokyo, where more consumers are turning away from overly loud venues in favor of listening bars—spaces with controlled volume, comfortable seating, and an atmosphere that invites lingering. The bar’s members-first policy is designed to preserve that sense of ease. Looking ahead, he reveals that the two restaurants will open more broadly to the public, while the bar will welcome regulars and their guests. The scenes are meant to interconnect seamlessly, before and after dinner, with plans to introduce lighter afternoon concepts to engage different rhythms of clientele.

“I’m not calculating how much profit each individual component makes,” Koo says. “What I care about is how far the system can go.” For him, success is not about isolated wins, but about building a stable structure—one that allows people, spaces, and culture the room to grow in an era of constant change.

For Andre Koo, tastings are never a formality. They are a non-negotiable baseline.

Whether it’s a bowl of beef noodle soup bearing his name or the menu at SENS, he insists on tasting everything himself. “If I haven’t tried it, it doesn’t pass,” he says bluntly. It’s not a lack of trust in his chefs, but a deep understanding of what young cooks truly need: direction and encouragement beyond their technical abilities. “What I fear most is someone losing interest halfway through, or winning a star and then not knowing what comes next.” That’s why he chooses to stand at the front, setting the standard and walking alongside them for the long haul.

In his view, retaining talent isn’t about slogans, but about building a true group structure. Joining the team doesn’t mean working for a single boss, but becoming part of a system where everyone owns their role, does it well, and is given the resources and space to experiment and even make mistakes. “It’s not about doing badly and being shown the door. We want to give young people many chances.” That sense of stability, he believes, is precisely what keeps chefs from leaving.

When it comes to food, he resists rushing to define what is good or bad. A contemporary French restaurant like SENS may not appeal to everyone, but what matters to him is whether guests experience that initial wow factor when they walk in. Is the plating compelling? Do the flavours spark something? Sight, smell, taste, and even emotion should all be activated at once. He jokes that today it’s not the eyes that eat first, but the phone. Still, that instant visual thrill heightens sensitivity to everything that follows.

His meticulous nature reveals itself most clearly in how he approaches wine during tastings. Each season, he doesn’t just focus on what’s on the plate, but personally participates in testing wine pairings. Eight, nine, sometimes ten bottles opened at once, all to examine how subtle differences in opening time might sharpen the match. To him, pairing is an exercise in balance and rhythm. “Different elements together should feel like a dance for two.”

Most diners may not notice a slight difference in timing or temperature, but they will feel the overall atmosphere, the warmth of service, and the sense of being understood. That’s why he never positions himself around the idea of a “star restaurant.” He always returns to the original intent: to let people eat with pleasure, drink with ease, and leave with a sense of surprise. That persistence reflects a service instinct formed early on, a habit of thinking first about others.

Having lived in New York for many years, Andre Koo says that finding a truly comforting bowl of beef noodle soup there is no easy task. You can certainly find beef noodles in Flushing or Chinatown, but while the technique may be evident, something is missing. The depth and aroma of the red-braised broth he remembers are hard to come by. He laughs, “You can eat it, but you keep missing that red-braised flavour.” When asked if that makes him firmly Team Red-Braised, the room breaks into laughter. He quickly adds, “Clear broth is good too—just that red-braised speaks to me more.”

That preference comes from a sensitivity to flavour structure. Asked why he chose beef noodle soup as a signature rather than braised pork rice, his answer is direct and personal. He doesn’t deny the appeal of braised pork rice, but his interest has always been in soup and its layers. “Braised pork rice is immediately satisfying. For many people, one bite already feels like home,” he says. Beef broth, on the other hand, demands constant adjustment and accumulation during the simmering process. Heat, bone aroma, fat, and time all shape its final form.

During the development of “The Chairman’s Beef Noodles,” the team built a clean, stable foundation using beef bones and beef shank, aiming for a richness that still feels balanced enough to drink every last spoonful. Koo worked closely with the hotel’s executive chef, first aligning on direction and philosophy before getting into execution. Forty to fifty Chinese medicinal herbs were tested repeatedly, with large quantities of beef bones simmered for long hours. Ratios and timing were adjusted again and again. His focus never wavered from one thing: the completeness of the broth. No MSG, no preservatives. Costs went up, but in exchange came a reassuring sense of clarity and purity. Many diners end up finishing the soup to the last drop.

That same standard extends to operations. From north to south, what people mention most about The Chairman’s Beef Noodles is the consistency of the broth. To Koo, consistency is a form of respect for the guest. It should not change by location. “There’s no cutting corners. Anyone who knows how to eat can tell from the first sip.”

As for the future, he is in no rush to draw a grand blueprint. The brand is still accumulating momentum. Whether it’s expanding locations, collaborating across brands, or entering overseas markets, the core principle remains the same: the broth must stay consistent. When entering Thailand, he is willing to adjust the level of heat, but not the structure of the red-braised soup. He chooses chili oil over tom yum’s sour heat. Flavours can extend, but the foundation cannot shift. “The foundation has to be there before you’re qualified to talk about variation.”

For Andre Koo, taste is the direction you choose to hold onto after repeated confirmation. His choice of beef noodle soup has nothing to do with nostalgia or approachability alone. It is daily enough, yet endlessly deep. The noodles are the body, the broth is the soul, and what remains is the maker’s judgment and experience, accumulated slowly over time.

When speaking about the future of dining, he borrows a term from the tech world: hyperscale. “True hyperscale always starts in the kitchen,” he says. His vision of combining AI with food is not about robots, but about understanding ingredients. Starting from the kitchen as the core, a single ingredient could be translated into multiple dishes, even beverages. No waste, only reinterpretation. It requires experience, cultural understanding, and a great deal of patience.

Yet no matter how far the conversation stretches toward AI, systems, or the next decade, it ultimately returns to the family table he has known since childhood. The taste of his mother’s cooking became the lifelong benchmark for what is truly good. Today, it echoes in the bowls of soup and glasses of wine he tastes again and again, checking and rechecking. He is willing to take the time because he believes what matters most is not speed, but whether someone is willing to do things properly for others. The world may scale up and forms may change, but as long as the table remains and the flavours stay honest, that is the spirit of hospitality he is willing to continue preparing for others.