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Reaching for Stars Is in Chef Buddha Lo’s DNA

Huso's Buddha Lo knows that there's more to a great restaurant than good food.

Chef Buddha Lo has built a career on skillful technique and precision. As the first back-to-back Top Chef winner—Season 19 in Houston and Season 20 in London and Paris, the latter of which was the franchise’s first World All-Stars edition—Lo proved he is as adept under the stress of television as he is in his own kitchen. In October 2025, just eight months after Huso opened in New York, the fine-dining restaurant earned a Michelin star. Lo was surprised by the timing, but not the outcome.

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Because the Michelin Guide does not operate in his native Australia, Lo understood early on that pursuing that level of cuisine would require leaving home.

Born to a Hong Kong father and Malaysian mother, Lo’s appetite for culinary precision began long before television cameras or Michelin observers entered the picture. He was 12 when his father, Tze Kwong Lo, invited him into the kitchen to cook at Jade Inn, the family’s restaurant in Port Douglas, Australia. One memory remains fixed: watching his father flip a Chinese omelet in a single fluid motion. It’s a recollection that he replays in slow motion, over and over. It was the moment he decided to become a chef. 

At 17, he won a stage scholarship at a two-Michelin-star restaurant in Pauillac, a small wine region near Bordeaux in France. “I turned 18 while I was there,” Lo........

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