Darren Chin: 'This is it, this is the end of the line for me'

In a world of spotlight-chasing chefs with their names on restaurants scattered across different time zones, Darren Chin has only one outpost where he cooks six days a week.

They say a man’s life is defined by moments, especially the ones they never see coming. For local culinary wunderkind Darren Chin, one of those moments happened on Jan 31, 2015, three months after the highly anticipated opening of DC Restaurant, his namesake eatery.

On the day they received their pay cheque, five of Chin’s kitchen staff sat him down at the end of dinner service and told him that they were leaving. “They didn’t hand in their resignation letters. They didn’t even explain why,” recounted Chin.