Do we like Kylie Kwong?
Our score: 8 out of 10. A clean record on harm and a long run of community work and openness about her own story, with no recent news to add much more.
Kylie Kwong is one of Australia's best-known Chinese-Australian chefs. She ran Billy Kwong and then Lucky Kwong for 24 years and cooked professionally for more than 30, before announcing in May 2024 that she was leaving the restaurant game. She said at the time that it just felt like the right time.
Her coming-out story is a big part of why the community loves her. She told ABC's Anh's Brush With Fame that her father reacted harshly when she told her parents, and gave her days to leave home. She has told it publicly and openly, which counts for a lot with a young audience still working out how to tell their own.
On the harm check, we looked for anything she has said or done against LGBTQ+ people, women, migrants or the planet, and found nothing. We also found no pattern of working with people who push harm. The record leans the other way: Sydney WorldPride named her one of its 10 Rainbow Champions in 2023 for her contribution to the LGBTQI+ community.
As for scandals, there aren't any. Searches for court cases, lawsuits and allegations came back with nothing about her, only a lot of noise about other Kylies. That's an honest result, not a gap we're hiding, though a quiet record isn't the same as a deep one.
The good stuff is practical. Her community work has included the Addison Road Community Organisation, Two Good Co and the Wayside Chapel. Leaving restaurants, she said she wanted to put her energy into social enterprises and charities, and into amplifying the stories of First Nations people and multicultural communities. In 2025 she was co-curating and co-hosting a Powerhouse Museum dinner series exploring Indian food around Harris Park.
Nothing new on her lately that we could find. The latest we saw was that 2025 museum series, so there's no fresh stoush to report. On what we found, she's an easy one to like, and a comfortable one to back.