How does a humble café worker become a culinary superstar, drawing people from all over the world to eat at one of his tables? With a generous serving of grit and a tireless sense of ambition. Welcome to the second instalment of the Ambition Project: a three-part series from Man of Many in collaboration with investing platform Stake, showcasing unique tales of drive and the determination to push onwards. Our second subject is once-in-a-generation chef and lord of the lobster, Big Sam Young, who has brought his dreams to life through sheer force of will (and his incomparable talent).
Big Sam Young does not settle for second best. The chef synonymous with lobster has an unwavering sense of ambition that has carried him ever onwards, starting out from a blue-collar upbringing in Hong Kong and ultimately making it all the way to Sydney, where he has devoted long hours and late nights to become one of the Harbour City’s most in-demand chefs.
With the culinary firebrand having just opened his second restaurant, Young’s Palace, in the heart of his beloved Potts Point, you might think he’d be ready to take a well-earned break. However, the self-described hustler doesn’t have time for such things.
After all, life is short, and as far as Young is concerned, this is only the beginning: “I think I just got started. I’ve just started warming up. So, it’s time to go hard and go chase that next restaurant.”
A Taste of Home
Young inherited his knack for conjuring magic in the kitchen from his mother, who always ensured her family had no shortage of delicious food when he was growing up in Hong Kong. Whether it was a regular weekday night or a big family celebration, food was at the heart of proceedings.
“My family always had very good food on the table, and that’s why I’m always a bit chubby,” Young says with a wry wink. “Food is always a big event in our family.”
However, it wasn’t until he had departed for a Canadian boarding school that Young found he might possess something of his mother’s magic touch. Fuelled by a craving for soy chicken, he went out in search of something approximating his mother’s signature dish. Perhaps he shouldn’t have been entirely surprised, but he discovered it was not on the menu at any of Three Hills, Alberta’s eateries. Refusing to be deterred, Young decided it was down to him to whip up a batch or three.
“I called my mum and asked her how to cook it,” he reveals. “I made it a few times. It wasn’t really successful, but I just kept on making it. I finally got it and shared that dish with my friends, who’d also come from Hong Kong and were living in the same dorm. It almost brought tears to their eyes. That’s the time and date I decided to dedicate my life to food, because food brings happiness to people.”
From Hong Kong to Sydney
Traditional education wasn’t an easy fit for Young. Despite enrolling at Washington State University (an institution he describes as a “top 10 party school in America”), he ultimately dropped out and was forced to return to Hong Kong.
There, he took his first foray into the world of hospitality. Working in a local café, he was introduced to some Australians, who opened his eyes to the possibility of making his mark Down Under.
“A bunch of my sous-chefs and chefs came from Australia, and I discovered this thing called a working holiday visa,” he says. “So I bought a ticket to Australia, with $3,000 in cash, and arrived in Australia 16 years ago.”
Despite his pluck, Young had a less-than-ideal start to his time in the Great Southern Land: “Fourteen days later, I lost all my money and my passport. It got stolen in my workplace, and I had to start from scratch.”
Broke and in an unfamiliar city, Young had to lean into the hustler mindset he attributes to his Hong Kong upbringing. His unwillingness to give in was an early demonstration of his talent for creating his own forward momentum, pushing himself ever onwards in pursuit of his ambitions.
“Hong Kong people are famous for being hustlers,” he says. “It’s always fast-paced, and there’s a lot of energy. It’s a city that never stops, just like London or New York. I can never stop. I’m always planning my next move. Coming from Hong Kong, that’s one of the big things with me.”
Starting at the Bottom
Without the buffer his savings would have provided, Young couldn’t afford to be picky when it came to securing employment. Taking up a kitchenhand position at a humble café in the north-west Sydney suburb of Eastwood, he established the work ethic that would serve him so well on his rise through Sydney’s culinary hierarchy: “I was getting paid $10 an hour, and at one point, I did 100 hours in a week. No days off.”
Despite this gruelling schedule, Young’s ambition remained undiminished. On the advice of his friends, he enrolled in the Le Cordon Bleu Sydney Culinary Institute to earn his qualification as a chef.
“I ended up doing an internship in one of the busiest restaurants, Cafe Sydney in Circular Quay,” he explains. “I was the shucking oyster guy. I was shucking between 80 and 120 dozen oysters a day. That was the only job I was allowed to do. I just shucked oysters for six months, and then they offered me a part-time position.”
It was an invaluable foot in the door. After finishing school and proving he had the necessary talent and discipline, Young secured a position at one of Australia’s largest hospitality companies: Merivale. Starting out in restaurants like Mr. Wong and Ms.G’s before moving on to Queen Chow Enmore, Young made his presence felt across some of the network’s most popular venues.
Rising through the ranks, he eventually helped open Queen Chow Manly, followed by Totti’s in Bondi. Then he cooked up a storm at Lotus in Potts Point, developing a great affection for the suburb that would become home to his second restaurant many years later. Said affection would only grow as he next took up residence at Merivale’s Room Ten just around the corner.
Leave Them Wanting S’More
Clearly, Young’s career was building up a formidable head of steam, but the arrival of COVID-19 saw the hospitality industry grind to a halt. An atmosphere of doom and gloom settled across Sydney, but where others saw disaster, Young saw opportunity.
He started selling takeaway meals that enabled people to enjoy his acutely honed culinary skills from the comfort of home: “That’s really when I started having my own business, and later on, when we could travel again, I specialised in an in-house luxury private dining experience called the Big Sam Young Experience.”
An emphatically positive response from the public and the new sense of independence that accompanied these entrepreneurial endeavours saw Young set his sights even higher. In May of 2022, he opened his first fully fledged restaurant: S’more in Castle Crag. Young’s life would never be the same.
As he explains, “We didn’t have millions of dollars to build a restaurant. We just opened without thinking. It was a crazy experience because it was something I had never seen in my life: people spending $16,000 on dinners for four. We were fully booked on a Tuesday night, with two sessions back-to-back. It was just intense, very crazy. The hype was there.”
While Young had anticipated something of a stumbling start, S’more took off like a rocket, with his signature lobster dishes providing additional fuel injection: “Running your own first business is supposed to be a learning curve, but then it outperformed anything I could ever imagine. We sold more than 8000 lobsters in 40 months, as well as five tonnes of beef. It was just incredible.”
Success so immense and immediate would make anyone recalibrate their ambitions, and that’s precisely what Young did. After 12 months, he was already looking for his next opportunity.
“After year one of S’more, I think the ambition part really came,” he says. “I really wanted a second restaurant immediately after seeing the performance of the first one.”
A Palace Fit for a Young King
It took some time for Young to find the right location for his second restaurant, but the grand opening of Young’s Palace in August 2025 was worth the wait. The culmination of years of unceasing drive and ambition on behalf of its head chef, it has proved precisely the restaurant the honorary Aussie had long dreamed of creating. Young’s Palace brings playful, personality-rich food to Kellett Street within its head chef’s cherished Potts Point.
“Kellett Street’s a little bit naughty, a bit gangster, a bit luxe, and I just think that really fits the vibe with my brand and that hustler energy,” Young smiles. “After I saw this site become available, I knew it was perfect for Young’s Palace, my local neighbourhood Chinese restaurant inspired by Chinatowns around the world.”
As you might have guessed, the recent launch of restaurant number two won’t see Young resting upon his laurels. As he proclaimed at the outset, he’s just getting started. But where does this ravenous ambition really come from?
“Having the opportunity to provide for the community and for my customers is why I still get up every day to do what I do,” he reveals. “You might be cooking for someone’s last meal on Earth, or you might be cooking for a significant milestone.”
In addition to this altruistic attitude, Young’s ambition is driven by memories of his parents while growing up: “When you see your parents struggle, it hits different, right? Because you want to provide for them and you want to do better than them.”
Of course, as is so often the case with Young, it also all comes back to lobster, the dish that helped put S’more and his broader career on the map in the first place.
“I’m the famous lobster guy in Sydney, and people often ask me why I love lobster so much,” he explains. “It’s because I could never afford lobster before. When I was making $10 an hour as a café kitchen hand, I would never have been able to afford to eat a lobster. But on that day, I told myself I needed to work hard and bust my arse off so I can eat lobster any time, anywhere I want.”
Investing In His Ambition
While Young has achieved more than he could have dreamed when he first attempted that soy chicken recipe from his dorm in Canada, he’s not one to pause for breath. Next, he’s excited to partner with Stake for the Ambition Project and elevate his already formidable Young’s Palace offering even further.
“The Stake Ambition project will really help me to transform the Young’s Palace courtyard and bring it to life,” he enthuses. “We didn’t actually have the money to transform the outside courtyard into a new space, so the Stake Ambition Project will really help bring this space to life.”
“I think this will become the place to be in summer because it’s going to be rosé and Chinese food all day long. And I’d like to install some heaters outside for the wintertime as well.”
As for Young’s advice for those with lofty ambitions of their own, he keeps things characteristically direct: “Fall down 10 times, get up 11 times. You’ve just got to keep driving it. Just keep pushing it until you get to where your dreams are. That’s my advice for you.”
If you’d like to follow this unimpeachable guidance, Stake is also looking to invest in your ambition. To find out more, simply click the Ambition Project link below, and you could kickstart your next step with $10,000 from Stake!
Credits:
Producer: Harry Parsons
Executive Producer: Frank Arthur
Director / Videographer: Adrian Emerton
Photographer: Matt Dunbar
Sound Engineer: James Yeremeyev
Gaffer: Konstantine Klemencic
Editors: Pool Party
Talent: Big Sam Young
Editorial/Interviewer: Rob Edwards, Frank Arthur
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