Filipino-Australian chef Hanz Gueco makes waves in the Paris food scene
Meet the expat chef shaking up Paris dining with his French-Chinese fusion restaurant, Cheval d’Or.
In the past 15 years in Paris, it’s a wave of expat chefs – not locals – that has really moved the dial in the city’s highly dynamic restaurant scene. These chefs are often trained in the French tradition, then set off on their own to propose not just new cuisine but new ways of dining, completely re-energising the city’s restaurant culture along the way. The list is as long as it is varied and includes Americans such as Robert Compagnon from Le Rigmarole, Braden Perkins of Verjus and Ellsworth, Japanese chefs Sota Atsumi of Restaurant Maison by Sota Atsumi and Atsushi Tanaka of A.T., the Swede Sven Chartier, formerly of Saturne and Clown Bar, and even Australians James Henry and Shaun Kelly of Le Doyenné.
The latest transplant getting noticed is 35-year-old, moustached Filipino-Australian chef Hanz Gueco, who proposes French-Chinese cuisine at his wildly popular restaurant Cheval d’Or, in the quiet village-like Paris neighbourhood of Jourdain.
“Fusion food is getting good in Paris now, but it’s still getting started,” says Gueco one Saturday morning over coffee, admitting, “It’s hard to find a French-Chinese restaurant”.
From the outside, Cheval d’Or looks like a traditional local Chinese, painted red with neon signage that beckons at night. Inside, though, it is much more contemporary, stripped back to its bare bones, with an airy, industrial feel courtesy of soaring ceilings, lime-washed walls, and an open-plan stainless-steel kitchen, hemmed by a wooden bar top with stools. This is Gueco’s first time cooking Chinese, but he’s tried his hand at many cuisines and is naturally innovative and imaginative. His pop-up last summer at La Cave du Paul Bert featured a menu that was “85 per cent cuisine Italian” and included such hits as a refreshing gazpacho with buckwheat noodles and granita, inspired by the Korean cold noodle dish, Naengmyeon, and a “tira millefeuille” for dessert.
Gueco was born in Manila, The Philippines, but migrated with his family to Sydney when he was 18 months old. He learned to cook in his early teens. “I’m from a first-generation immigrant family and they [my parents] worked late nights. I kind of had to figure it out for myself,” he says. After high school, he had an apprenticeship at Mark Best’s former Crown Street institution, Marque, and then Neil Perry’s esteemed Rockpool. He travelled extensively, working at David Kinch’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant Manresa in Los Gatos and visting Belgium and Sweden.
Looking back, Gueco feels that kitchen culture left more of an impression on him than anything else. “I appreciate when a restaurant feels very personal to the person running it,” he says, adding that Kinch was a particular standout. “There was positivity in the kitchen, and the food was beautiful and thoughtful but not pretentious.”
When he arrived in Paris in 2016, he worked with the aforementioned Chartier at Saturne and then Perkins and his partner, Laura Adrian, at Verjus, Ellsworth, and Twenty Two Club.
“Hanz has the utmost respect, a reverence for French cuisine. His ideas are not just to ‘modernise’ but complement them,” says Adrian. “Playful but not trendy, fun but not gimmicky and, above all, delicious. He’s meticulous but not fussy, never mean, always hard-working and humble.”
At Cheval d’Or – which he took over in 2023 with three other young associates: chef Luis Andrade (who passed through Au Passage, Clown Bar and Fripon), his partner, sommelier Crislaine Medina, and Nadim Smair – he funnels this positivity into a “crowd-friendly” experience. It’s delicious and unexpected but not fussy. A spice-rubbed duck a l’orange is served with French crêpes. There are also scallop and prawn dumplings drowned in a creamy spinach beurre blanc. Chausson aux pommes is a take on the classic apple-filled puff pastry, a viennoiserie reimagined as a bao-shaped cinnamon donut stuffed with cooked apples and vanilla ice-cream.
The goal is a near-perfect fusion. “As long as you stay open-minded and not think it has to be one way, it works,” Gueco says. “If I am doing it right, it’s halfway between French and Chinese, not one or the other.”
“Hanz has deeply mastered a harmony between the two cuisines,” adds Paris-based journalist Lindsey Tramuta, who writes for Eater and The New York Times and traces the expat-led food revolution in Paris in her book, The New Paris. “The Cheval d’Or is a true celebration where each influence is honoured and comes together with purpose. It’s not mixing flavours for the sake of it; they all make sense.”
Despite its new reputation as an off-the-beaten-path destination, Gueco remains light-hearted and modest, intent on maintaining the restaurant’s charm as a neighbourhood joint. “I just want to do work that I’m proud of and that is meaningful to me,” he says.
This story is from the May issue of WISH.
