Oceania Cruises Chef of the Year: Hugh Allen

Midway through your meal at Yiaga, Hugh Allen asks if you’d like to tour the kitchen. By the time you’re back at your table, you’re a budding expert in wood-fired earthenware, in cool-climate ferns and native grasses, in dam-aged wines, in artisan bladesmithing. Hell, you might learn something about food, too. But cooking is just one arrow – albeit razor sharp – in Allen’s quiver. Like the best chefs and the best people, his genius is his curiosity.

Curiosity fashions a fine diner out of a derelict pavilion. Curiosity trims a restaurant with unique clay bricks and hides it in the surrounding elm trees. It makes dramatic opening statements with lettuce. It pairs coconut with caviar. It wraps kangaroo in nasturtiums and suspends them in shiitake broth. It asks “What would it take to operate two three-hat restaurants simultaneously?” and doesn’t wait for a response.

Curiosity is a noble value: it’s kindling for creativity and fuel for good ideas. Allen has it in spades, a chef who spins his obsession with nature and craft into genuinely disruptive blueprints, committing them to the physical world – and to the plate – with clear-eyed brilliance.

Awarded three hats right off the bat, suffice to say, Yiaga was a good idea. Sharing it has been a gift to diners here and around the world. Try balancing that with executive chef duties at 55th-floor powerhouse Vue de Monde, also triple-crowned. Oh, and a newborn at home.