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Hetty Lui McKinnon
Hetty Lui McKinnon is an Australian Chinese vegetarian/plant-based/vegan cookbook author, recipe developer, food writer, and James Beard Award finalist and winner. She has written five cookbooks with the fifth, Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds winning the James Beard Award for Vegetable Focused Cooking in 2024.
McKinnon was born in Sydney to Chinese immigrant parents from Guangdong, China. Her father immigrated in the late 50s and her mother arrived in the early 1960s. She has two siblings and is the youngest sibling.
McKinnon's father worked at the Flemington Markets as an importer and exporter of bananas. He brought fresh produce back for his family, which had a huge influence on McKinnon's later cooking. McKinnon's father died in 1989, when she was 15 years old.
McKinnon's Australian upbringing and cross-cultural experiences profoundly shaped her. She recalls feeling like a minority outside of her home while also growing up in a traditional Chinese household. McKinnon has stated that food was central to her family, calling it a "common language." Although McKinnon grew up eating her mother's Cantonese food, she did not really cook in her childhood.
When she was a 15-year-old high school student, McKinnon's career advisor dissuaded her from becoming a journalist, and encouraged her to study public relations instead.
In the early 2000s, McKinnon moved to London because her husband got a job there. She got a job at a PR agency. McKinnon resided there for four years before moving back to Sydney with her husband.
After her move back to Sydney, McKinnon was freelancing for a PR agency, but found herself gravitating towards cooking. When Mckinnon would put her children down for their naps, she would cook through Yotam Ottolenghi's first cookbook. She credits this as a major turning point that helped her fall in love with cooking, learn practical techniques, and layer flavors.
In 2011, McKinnon founded Arthur Street Kitchen, a community kitchen making salads that highlight local produce, in Sydney's Surry Hills neighborhood. She made salads and sweets out of her home kitchen and delivered them by bike throughout the neighborhood. The menu would rotate, ranging from salads she had been making for years to ones inspired by classic dishes. McKinnon emailed out a weekly menu to subscribers that featured two salads a day, making deliveries on Thursday and Friday for up to forty people.
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Hetty Lui McKinnon
Hetty Lui McKinnon is an Australian Chinese vegetarian/plant-based/vegan cookbook author, recipe developer, food writer, and James Beard Award finalist and winner. She has written five cookbooks with the fifth, Tenderheart: A Cookbook About Vegetables and Unbreakable Family Bonds winning the James Beard Award for Vegetable Focused Cooking in 2024.
McKinnon was born in Sydney to Chinese immigrant parents from Guangdong, China. Her father immigrated in the late 50s and her mother arrived in the early 1960s. She has two siblings and is the youngest sibling.
McKinnon's father worked at the Flemington Markets as an importer and exporter of bananas. He brought fresh produce back for his family, which had a huge influence on McKinnon's later cooking. McKinnon's father died in 1989, when she was 15 years old.
McKinnon's Australian upbringing and cross-cultural experiences profoundly shaped her. She recalls feeling like a minority outside of her home while also growing up in a traditional Chinese household. McKinnon has stated that food was central to her family, calling it a "common language." Although McKinnon grew up eating her mother's Cantonese food, she did not really cook in her childhood.
When she was a 15-year-old high school student, McKinnon's career advisor dissuaded her from becoming a journalist, and encouraged her to study public relations instead.
In the early 2000s, McKinnon moved to London because her husband got a job there. She got a job at a PR agency. McKinnon resided there for four years before moving back to Sydney with her husband.
After her move back to Sydney, McKinnon was freelancing for a PR agency, but found herself gravitating towards cooking. When Mckinnon would put her children down for their naps, she would cook through Yotam Ottolenghi's first cookbook. She credits this as a major turning point that helped her fall in love with cooking, learn practical techniques, and layer flavors.
In 2011, McKinnon founded Arthur Street Kitchen, a community kitchen making salads that highlight local produce, in Sydney's Surry Hills neighborhood. She made salads and sweets out of her home kitchen and delivered them by bike throughout the neighborhood. The menu would rotate, ranging from salads she had been making for years to ones inspired by classic dishes. McKinnon emailed out a weekly menu to subscribers that featured two salads a day, making deliveries on Thursday and Friday for up to forty people.