The biggest, grandest branch of King Chef has risen at the intersection of West Avenue, Quezon Avenue and Timog Avenue in Quezon City. It’s a two-story, stand-alone restaurant with plenty of space — all 1,100 square meters — for dining, with private rooms and banquet halls. Dining areas are creatively designed to allow enough privacy for each group of diners, with lighting and interiors that speak contemporary styles and a cozy overall ambiance. There are long tables and booth seating, although diners can also find round lauriat tables clothed in red, with linens in gold, for those who still prefer the traditional setup, albeit in a leveled-up manner.

Although still on soft opening run, the 330-seater restaurant is already enjoying good patronage mainly because King Chef has already built a name for itself and gained the respect of purists for being one of the best Chinese restaurants in the metro. The food is authentic Cantonese cuisine, ranging from a wide selection of classic and modern dim sums, comfort food such as noodle soups and congee, to lauriat fine dining fares like live seafood and premium Chinese selections like abalone and Peking duck.

King Chef actually started in 2010, when its owners Michael Chan Ang and Marites Apiado-Ang opened its first restaurant along Banawe Street in Quezon City. They already had a restaurant at that time, Cantonese Soup Kitchen, which served Chinese herbal soups, but Marites’ dream was to open a mainstream Chinese restaurant that specialized in Cantonese cuisine.

“Cantonese cuisine is still the most widely accepted Chinese cuisine in the Philippines,” explains Marites. “As with any authentic Cantonese restaurant, our goal was and still is to preserve and enhance our ingredients’ natural flavors. We aim to bring out the fresh and natural flavors of vegetables, meats and fruits that we use in preparing our food.”

Michael and Marites decided to call the restaurant King Chef because “we wanted our guests to feel like a king when they dine with us. We also wanted our restaurant to be like a king’s kitchen, with an elegant and luxurious feel fit to serve a king yet at the same time feels warm and comforting like home.”

“I had to first assemble a team with expertise in Cantonese cuisine. I am proud to have found a team of Filipino chefs with expertise in Cantonese cuisine, the right food philosophy and leadership principles and character fitting our core values. With proper training, immersion trips in Hong Kong and China, as well as periodic internal competitions to drive innovation, they have put together an authentic Cantonese menu that satisfies the cravings of even Mainland Chinese communities in Metro Manila,” says Marites.

King Chef has since expanded into two concepts—the original King Chef Dimsum Kitchen, and the full-fledged King Chef Seafood Restaurant.

King Chef Dimsum Kitchen is the more casual among the two, so casual that it can accommodate mall shoppers who are in a rush as well as residents and communities around busy business districts. It has a shorter menu that focuses on practical fares.

King Chef Seafood Restaurant is a fine dining concept that accepts functions and serves not just dimsum but more premium items as roasted meats, live seafood, and full lauriat menus. It is the place for celebrations of special occasions and milestones or for pure enjoyment of what the Cantonese kitchen has to offer.

The chain now consists of three branches of Dimsum Kitchen (Banawe, Shaw Boulevard, and Baguio) and three branches of seafood restaurant (Lucky Chinatown, Ayala Malls Manila Bay, and the new West Avenue).