Nina Huynh lands dream gig at Yellow in Potts Point

Nina Huynh wanted to be a chef from the time she was a little girl learning to cook with her grandmother. Now she works at a hatted restaurant. Here’s the inspiring story of how she did it.

Chef Nina Huynh. Pictures: Jordan Shields

• These women are helping solve the world’s problems
• The record breaking mayor

Nina Huynh still remembers the exact moment she was given the job at award-winning restaurant Yellow.

The Glenmore Park chef had worked so hard to reach that moment but when it arrived she was speechless.

“I couldn’t get the words out, I was just nodding,” she said.

She remembers leaving the hatted Potts Point restaurant clutching her employee paperwork in her hand, tears welling in her eyes.

The inspiring chef said it was never to late to reinvent yourself.

That single moment had been years in the making, a journey that started shortly after the birth of her daughter when she decided that it was time, finally, to follow her food passion.

“I’ve always wanted to be a chef and I thought, I’m just going to Google it and TAFE NSW came up first,” she said.

Huynh’s love of cooking came from childhood days spent with her grandmother.

“We’d spend so much time with my grandmother in the garden and cooking things from the garden,” she said.

While she always knew she wanted to be a chef, as a young girl she never considered it as an option.

“When I was growing up it was always thought you had to be a man — you had to be really tough,” she said.

So she enrolled in an arts degree and worked as an account executive.

“And then I got married and had my daughter and then I realised, you know what, I really want to do where my heart lies,” she said.

So she decided to take action and began working nights in the hospitality industry to get experience before taking the plunge and enrolling at TAFE.

Her first day at the Wentworth Falls campus was one she never forgot.

“As soon as I walked in, even onto the campus, it was a feeling of coming home,” she said.

After graduating and building up her experience at kitchens around Penrith, the 28-year-old eventually landed her dream job.

After all the late nights, the hours spent practising, the juggling of motherhood and work and study, she had made it — and she had proved she was plenty tough enough.

“I find that women, we don’t give us enough credit — we are so strong,” she said.

Just as her grandmother taught her to cook, she is now passing on those same skills to her five-year-old daughter — who is her biggest fan.

“She told her teacher, ‘My mum works really hard and when I grow up I want to be a chef like her’,” Huynh said.

Huynh said it was never too late to follow your dreams.

“You have so many chances to reinvent yourself,” she said.

IN OTHER NEWS