Buddha

Buddha Lo - born Kah-wai Lo on 20 August 1991 in Port Douglas, Queensland - is an Australian chef based in

New York City and the most decorated competitor in Top Chef history. He is the only person to win two consecutive seasons of the show, taking Top Chef: Houston (Season 19, 2022) and Top Chef: World All-Stars (Season 20, set in London, 2023), each time receiving a US$250,000 prize. He earned the nickname “Buddha” as a child, having grown chubby eating at his family’s Chinese restaurant - the Jade Inn in Port Douglas - where his Hong Kongese father and Malaysian mother raised him.

Lo began cooking professionally at age 12 in the family restaurant and started a culinary apprenticeship at a

five-star hotel at 14. At 17 he moved to Melbourne, working first at Matteo’s Restaurant before winning a

scholarship for a stage at the two-Michelin-starred Café Lavinal in Pauillac, France. Back in Australia, he became

head chef at Raymond Capaldi’s Hare & Grace by age 19, then moved to London to work under Clare Smyth and

Matt Abé at Restaurant Gordon Ramsay, where he received the Gordon Ramsay Excellence Award in 2014. He subsequently staged across France, Sweden, and Copenhagen before relocating to New York City, where he spent a year at Eleven Madison Park.

For Top Chef Season 19, Lo binge-watched eight prior seasons before filming, taking careful notes on past

contestants’ mistakes. He dedicated his victory to his late father, Tze-Kwong ‘Tony’ Lo, who died from cancer just

two days before Buddha received the call to appear on the show. Invited back for Season 20 in London, Lo spent

the three months between the Season 19 broadcast and filming studying British cuisine intensively - and won again, becoming the series’ first repeat champion. In 2025, his restaurant Huso in New York City earned a Michelin star. In 2026, Lo entered America’s Culinary Cup - Padma Lakshmi’s new CBS competition - as one of the most recognisable and formidable names in the field, competing for the largest cash prize in culinary television

history: US$1 million.