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Photo: Fleurette
Homegrown chef Tariq Helou of French-Japanese-influenced contemporary restaurant Fleurette in Rangoon Road is the most Googled chef in Asia, according to travel platform Explore Worldwide. He is ranked No. 7 on the list of Top 20 Most Popular Chefs by the number of Google searches globally.
The 30-year-old chef, who is of Japanese, Chinese-Singaporean and Lebanese descent and is known for fusing French and Japanese flavours, amassed 1.62 million searches on Google in 2023. The comparative study analysed the number of Google searches for over 1,700 chefs around the world from November 2022 to October 2023, and ranked them in their popularity in terms of the number of Google searches tied to their names.
The Most Googled Chef of 2023 went to British celebrity chef Gordan Ramsay, who chalked up some 12 million Google searches last year. The Hell’s Kitchen chef-restaurateur, who is notorious for his short temper, has three Michelin stars for his London restaurant on Royal Hospital Road, two for his collaboration with the Pressoir d’Argent at the Intercontinental in Bordeaux, and one for his restaurant at the Trianon Palace in Versailles. He also runs Bread Street Kitchen in Marina Bay Sands.
Coming in second are British chef Jamie Oliver, who runs his eponymous restaurant and retail empire, and American chef Guy Fieri, who is a fixture on Food Network and restaurant chain owner (both were the subject of 4.42 million Google searches each last year.)
Chef Vicky Lau. (Photo: Tate Dining Room)
In Asia, Chef Vicky Lau of contemporary Michelin-starred restaurants Tate Dining Room and Mora in Hong Kong is the second most Googled chef, after Helou, at No. 10 (1.32 million searches). Chef Sanjay Thumma, who is also a television and YouTube personality in India, came in third at No. 14 (726K searches).
Other noteworthy inclusions in the Top 20 list include Nigella Lawson (No. 4, 2.95 million searches), the legendary Wolfgang Puck (No. 11, 1.32 million searches), and French culinary powerhouse Alain Ducasse (No. 12, 1.09 million searches), whose restaurant Osteria BBR by Alain Ducasse at Raffles Hotel Singapore quietly shuttered earlier this year.
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Fleurette’s Helou has worked at Michelin-starred restaurants in Europe, including the two-starred Domaine de Chateauvieux in Geneva, where he honed his French culinary skills before moving on to Restaurant Louis in Paris. He has also interned in like Sumibikappo Shirosaka and Restaurant Anis in Tokyo. In 2019, he returned to Singapore and co-founded a supper club before opening Fleurette in September 2020.
The Top 5 most Googled chefs in the world:
- Gordon Ramsay (12,000,000)
- Jamie Oliver (4,416,000)
- Guy Fieri (4,416,000)
- Nigella Lawson (2,952,000)
- Giada De Laurentiis (1,980,000)
