Luke Nguyen is a renowned Vietnamese-Australian chef, best known for his television series Luke Nguyen's Vietnam, Luke Nguyen's Greater Mekong and more recently Luke Nguyen'sFrance. Born in a Thai refugee camp after his parents escaped their homeland in Vietnam, Luke's family made their way to Australia where Luke was raised in Sydney's vibrant and storied Vietnamese quarter. His parents opened and ran a Vietnamese restaurant called Pho Cay Du and it was this familial passion for food that first ignited Luke's interest in Vietnamese cooking. After learning the basics from his parents, Luke trained with a number of respected chefs before opening The Red Lantern restaurant. Since then, The Red Lantern has become one of Sydney's most acclaimed Vietnamese restaurants. Luke has written six cookbooks: Secrets of the Red Lantern, Songs of Sapa, Indochine, Greater Mekong and The Food of Vietnam and Luke Nguyen's France. Luke now bases himself in Ho Chi Minh City, where he runs the city's only professional cooking studio, Grain by Luke, described by him as a kind of speakeasy cooking school. He has a considerable profile in Vietnam, in no small part due to his judging role on MasterChef Vietnam (20 million people watch it).

He says he gets stopped on the street a lot - not so much, he thinks, because of his television presence. Rather, because he looks like his mate Dustin Nguyen, who was Johnny Depp's sidekick from the original 21 Jump Street.