Lawrence Cheong Jun Bo
Assistant Pastry Chef
Impiana hotel Kuala Lumpur
Working Experience
One World Hotel 2007-2010 Commis
Renaissance Kuala Lumpur 2010 Commis 1
Hotel Maya kuala Lumpur 2010-2012 Chef De Partie
Awards / Achievements
FHM 2009- Diploma Plated Dessert
FHM 2010- Silver Medal Malaysia pastry Cup
FHM 2010- Gold Medal Freestyle Confectionary
FHA 2012- Gold Medal Chocolate Showpiece
FHA 2012- Gold Medal Dress the Cake
Profile Story
Lawrence Cheong Jun Bo, 27 years old, currently working at Impiana hotel KLCC as an assistant pastry chef.
Lawrence decided to join pastry line as his major career after he graduated from secondary school, his mom has sent him to Taiwan to study – Food science and technology & Bakery – for 2 years by himself. Unfortunately food science is a course which need very strong knowledge in science, and Lawrence has totally zero knowledge, so he force to focus in bakery, from there he slowly became attracted in bakery and pastry. And now his target is to combine pastries and art into wonderful pieces to serve on the table.
For him, pastry is an art form in making food. Many unique design and taste could be created, it has an unlimited possibilities. And pastries always makes people feel warm, sweet and remember what they eat. No matter you yourself made it or made by others, it is truly an enjoying and satisfying experience.
Lawrence has started his first step at One World Hotel since April 2007 as a 3rd commis led by the First Chef Law Chii Ngien and 2nd Chef Joas Kam. With a very good opportunity and freedom given by chef Joas, Lawrence got for himself a very comfort space to have his experiment and tries with his best partner named Chong Ko Wai in the hotel.
Then he got promoted as a 2nd commis just on his 3rd year. As an upcoming talent he was recommended by a demi Chef Tan Wei Loon to join the Renaissance Kuala Lumpur as a 1st commis led by chef Niklesh Sharma, for 8th months hew was well mentored by chef Niklesh and then got a new recommendation by demi chef Kevin to join Maya Hotel in December 2010 as a Chef De Partie and trained by Chef Teh Chee Fook. After 20 months he has been offered by Chef Joseph from Impiana KLCC to be a Assistant Pastry up to this time.
With these 5 years experience, Lawrence was awarded Diploma in – Plated Desserts- in Food and Hotel Malaysia 2009, coming next would be Sliver Medal – Live Chocolate Showpieces and Dessert Challenge- and Gold Medal awarded in – Freestyle confectionery- in Food and Hotel Malaysia 2011, the Gold medal – Chocolate Showpieces- and another Gold medal – Live Cake dressing in Food and Hotel Asia in Singapore 2012. From these competitions Lawrence has found out his strength is in making art work presentation especially in display showpieces.
The hardest part in pastry life definitely would be the competitions trial run period, from that moment it needs a very big focus in every single part of the trials before the real competition. No room to fail in working especially when facing heavy functions during preparations of competitions. The responsibilities of such career is tremendous.
There is a chef who influenced me the most in pastry line, and he is Chef Chong Ko Wai my best partner ever in this line, without his passionate sharing of his knowledge and skills I won't be able to grow so fast. In my view, to be a successful chef besides having a good leader chef is to have a great guide, as well as the most important is to have a very good partner to grow together, and Iam lucky cause I have few of them.
If I could be someone else in the world, I will still choose to be a pastry chef, I believe people outside there wouldn’t know how much fun and how challenging it is to be a chef pastry, unless they have to try.
In my view, to become a successful pastry chef, one must be able to have deep passion in pastry and full passion to go through every single stage, “no pain, no gain “ is definitely the best word of advice.
In my future plan, I wish I could have my own very unique pastry shop that people haven’t seen before in Malaysia. A brand new concept designed pastry shop which is full of new modern pastries
and art pieces in it.
Source:
http://malaysiachefs.com/pa/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/pastry-chef-mar-2013-chef-lawrence-cheong-profile.pdf
UPDATE 8 September 2015
I was not lucky to be invited to the event. Sharing a blog post from one of the lucky ones who got invited to the event - http://www.rolledin2onemom.com/2015/09/academy-of-pastry-arts-chocolates.html
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