Diaspora & Cuisine: Chanthy Yen, Cambodia on Canada's menu

Born in Windsor, Ontario, to Cambodian refugee parents, Chanthy Yen learned to cook on the floor of his grandmother's kitchen. He has since won Top Chef Canada, cooked for Justin Trudeau, and opened Touk, his Cambodian restaurant, in Vancouver. A portrait of a chef who has put Khmer cooking front and centre.

Chef Chanthy Yen

Chanthy Yen did not grow up dreaming of becoming a chef. As a child in Windsor, he spent his days on the kitchen floor with his grandmother — cleaning chickens, picking herbs, pounding kroeung, the Cambodian spice paste. His parents, refugees who had come from Cambodia, worked long hours. Yen looked after his younger cousins, one child on his hip, one hand on the mortar.

His grandmother, Thonn Phan — yey, in Khmer — remains at the centre of his story. He wears a necklace that was hers and has not taken it off since she died, more than a decade ago. His cooking comes from her, along with the idea that you feed people to care for them.

A schooling in Europe's great kitchens

His first job, as a teenager, was in an Italian restaurant in Windsor, under a Syrian chef. The big houses came later. Yen passed through Mugaritz, Andoni Luis Aduriz's restaurant in the Spanish Basque Country, and Ferran Adrià's research centre in Barcelona. He also worked with Magnus Nilsson in Sweden. He came away with high-end technique, which he would eventually turn on his own memories.

Montreal, the pop-ups and the recognition

In Montreal, Yen moved from project to project. He opened Fieldstone in 2017, a 'New Canadian' restaurant that saw him voted chef of the year by Eater Montreal's readers. He ran the kitchen at the Parlement pub. When the pandemic closed restaurants in 2020, he reopened the empty room under another name: Touk, a Cambodian street-food pop-up. It caught on at once. A run of Cambodian tasting dinners followed, and a counter at Montreal's Time Out Market.

A prime minister's chef

In 2021, blacked-out SUVs began parking outside Touk. Yen first took them for unwelcome company. It was Justin Trudeau's entourage, picking up food. Those visits led to an offer: to become the prime minister's personal chef. Yen took it. He cooked family meals and state dinners, and represented Canada at the Club des Chefs des Chefs summit in Madrid in 2022.

The role carried a particular weight for him. Yen was the first racialised and openly gay cook to hold it. And it was Justin Trudeau's father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, who had opened Canada's borders to Cambodian refugees in the 1980s. Feeding that man's son, he has said, was a way of repaying what the country had given his family.

Top Chef Canada

In 2024, Yen won season 11 of Top Chef Canada, cooking Cambodian food. He was the first contestant of Cambodian descent to win the show, and its first openly gay winner. The prize, 100,000 dollars, would become his seed money.

A return to Cambodia, at Raffles' invitation

His win brought an invitation that took him back to the country. In March 2025, the Raffles group hosted him as guest chef at its two heritage hotels in Cambodia. In Siem Reap, he built a five-course tasting menu at the 1932 restaurant of Raffles Grand Hotel d'Angkor, then gave a cooking class. In Phnom Penh, he cooked a run of dinners and lunches at Restaurant Le Royal. At a press lunch, the menu ran from a duck bolognese with fresh pasta and Khmer spices to a coconut cake with grilled rice. Between services, he stopped by the Paul Dubrule and Sala Bai hospitality schools and shopped the local markets.

Chef Chanthy Yen at Raffles Hotel Le Royal, in Phnom Penh

Touk, in Vancouver

In December 2025, Yen opened Touk in Vancouver, on Alberni Street — his first solo restaurant as owner and head chef. The menu is contemporary Cambodian cooking, built on European technique and West Coast produce. It runs to his borbor, a Cambodian congee finished with squid, prawns and a Kampot pepper foam. A mural on one wall traces Cambodia and moments from his life.

A book for Yey

One long-held project remains: a cookbook in tribute to his grandmother, due from Penguin Random House. Yen wants it to tell the story of Canada's Cambodians — those who fled the war and are still looking for a place, on both sides. He has another old ambition too: to cook one day for the King of Cambodia.

For now, he cooks in Vancouver, in the first restaurant that is truly his own.

Also on Cambodge Mag: Diaspora & Journey: Chef Chanthy Yen, the prodigal child's visit