Taiwan-born chef Jason Liu runs LING LONG, the contemporary Chinese fine-dining restaurant that earned a Michelin star in Beijing in 2022 and a second star for its Shanghai outpost in 2024.
His cooking translates French technique into Chinese flavour, built on a year-long research trip across China’s regional cuisines and a childhood shaped by Taipei wet markets.
TL;DR
- Full name Liu He-sen, known professionally as Jason Liu, born in Taiwan
- Chef-owner of LING LONG Beijing (opened 2019) and LING LONG Shanghai (opened 2024, inside Waldorf Astoria on The Bund)
- Both restaurants hold one Michelin star, awarded in 2022 and 2024 respectively
- Won the Beijing Michelin Young Chef Award in 2022 before turning 30
- Signature style: classical French technique applied to Chinese ingredients and regional traditions
Jason Liu key facts
| Born | Taiwan |
| Nationality | Taiwanese |
| Main restaurants | LING LONG Beijing, LING LONG Shanghai |
| Michelin stars | One star Beijing (2022), one star Shanghai (2024) |
| Style | Contemporary Chinese, French technique, regional ingredients |
| Notable awards | Beijing Michelin Young Chef Award 2022, Black Pearl Young Chef of the Year |
| Rankings | Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants 2023 and 2024 |
Early life and training of Jason Liu
Jason Liu grew up in Taiwan surrounded by the produce, aromas and regional restaurants of Taipei’s wet markets. He started cooking seriously at 14 and moved into professional kitchens as a teenager, drawn first to Western rather than Chinese cuisine.
The specific sense memory of those markets (fresh seafood laid out on ice, herbs sold by weight, the smell of fermented condiments) became the aesthetic reference point he would later translate into fine dining. Before that translation could happen, he spent years in classical French kitchens learning reduction, stock-building and sauce work. French method, not Chinese flavour, was his first technical language.
Liu put that training to work by opening Bistro 3 in Beijing, a Western restaurant where he grew into his own voice as a chef. It gave him the kitchen management experience he needed, but it was not the cuisine he wanted to spend his life cooking.
He closed that chapter and took a year-long research trip across China, eating his way through regional cuisines from Sichuan to Shandong to Yunnan, tasting produce directly from farmers and studying how each region built its flavour. That sabbatical became the spine of everything LING LONG does now.
Jason Liu career timeline
- Age 14: First serious cooking, Taiwan
- Early career: Training in French fine-dining kitchens
- Pre-2019: Opens Bistro 3, a Western restaurant in Beijing
- Pre-2019: Year-long sabbatical travelling across China to study regional cuisines
- 2019: Opens LING LONG Beijing inside Stey, Bei Zhaolong Hotel
- 2022: LING LONG Beijing awarded one Michelin star; Liu wins Beijing Michelin Young Chef Award
- 2023: LING LONG Beijing ranked on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants list at No. 77
- 2024: Opens LING LONG Shanghai at Waldorf Astoria on The Bund, earns one Michelin star within months
- 2024: Walks the Hermès SS24 Menswear runway in Shanghai, partners with Nike
Jason Liu signature style: re-fine Chinese dining
Liu describes his approach as “re-fine dining” applied to Chinese cuisine. The framework is simple to state and hard to execute: use French technique to pull concentrated flavour out of Chinese ingredients, without flattening what makes those ingredients Chinese.
Reduction, dry-ageing and precise sauce work sit alongside fermented grain sauces, sticky rice, fish maw and regional pickles. The result is a menu that feels both modern and rooted, rather than the usual East-meets-West shorthand.
The sourcing reads like a regional map of China. Shandong produces the wagyu and the celery. Yunnan supplies honey used across three different preparations in one dessert. Parmesan is made artisanally in Beijing to Liu’s own specification.
LING LONG’s menu is built around what arrives fresh from those specific producers rather than around a fixed concept forced onto whatever is available. The tasting menu in Shanghai is organised around four themes (Xian or umami, tradition, localisation and memory) each running through several courses, which gives diners a narrative to follow across the meal.
Notable dishes at LING LONG
Three dishes illustrate the LING LONG method most clearly. Poached king crab leg, finished with butter and cream and served over tomato water, celery oil and tomato jelly with shiso flowers, anchors itself with fermented grain sauce (zao lu) while the dairy and tomato base carry the French refinement.
Sticky rice and fish maw, cooked in a sauce of Parmesan and orange peel with a Parmesan crisp on top, uses an artisan Beijing-made Parmesan commissioned specifically for the dish.
The signature soup, made from three-year-old Tangshan black-footed chicken and dry-aged for three months before service, shows the whole philosophy in one bowl: a Chinese ingredient with Chinese cultural weight, pushed further by French ageing technique than the tradition alone would allow.
Jason Liu awards and recognition
- 2022: Beijing Michelin Young Chef Award
- 2022: LING LONG Beijing awarded one Michelin star
- 2023: LING LONG Beijing enters Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants (ranked No. 77)
- 2024: LING LONG Shanghai awarded one Michelin star
- 2024: LING LONG Shanghai debuts on Asia’s 50 Best Restaurants at No. 36
- Black Pearl Restaurant Guide: Young Chef of the Year
- Featured on Best Chef Top 100
Jason Liu impact on contemporary Chinese cuisine
Liu belongs to a small group of chefs (alongside figures like Mingoo Kang in Seoul and Junghyun Park in New York) rebuilding their own national cuisines at the fine-dining level using techniques learned abroad.
The stance is deliberate. Chinese fine dining spent years being defined either by banquet tradition or by Western chefs interpreting Chinese flavour from outside, and Liu’s generation is writing a different version.
His fashion work (the Hermès runway, the Nike partnership, a Shake Shack collaboration) pulls LING LONG into a cultural conversation that extends beyond the restaurant industry. That is how a single restaurant becomes a signal about what contemporary Chinese culture looks like.
He fits naturally into a conversation with chefs like Gaggan Anand, who took a similar route with Indian cuisine, using French method as a starting point and building a regional-modernist menu around it.
Jason Liu FAQ
What is Jason Liu’s restaurant called?
LING LONG. There are two locations: LING LONG Beijing (opened 2019) and LING LONG Shanghai (opened 2024, located in the Waldorf Astoria on The Bund).
How many Michelin stars does Jason Liu have?
Two one-star restaurants. LING LONG Beijing received its star in 2022 and LING LONG Shanghai received its star in 2024.
Where is Jason Liu from?
Taiwan. He grew up shaped by Taipei’s wet markets and regional Chinese restaurants before training in French kitchens and relocating to mainland China.
What style of food does LING LONG serve?
Contemporary Chinese fine dining built on French technique. Liu calls it a “re-fine” approach, meaning classical French refinement applied to Chinese ingredients and regional traditions rather than fusion for its own sake.
What training did Jason Liu have?
He started cooking at 14 in Taiwan, trained professionally in French fine-dining kitchens, ran his own Western restaurant (Bistro 3) in Beijing, then took a year-long sabbatical travelling across China to study regional cuisines before opening LING LONG.
What is next for Jason Liu
With two starred restaurants before age 32, Jason Liu has more runway than most chefs at his level. His recent work outside the kitchen (fashion collaborations, Nike, Shake Shack) suggests the LING LONG brand is being treated as a platform rather than a single restaurant concept.
The question for the next decade is whether that platform stays anchored in the two flagship dining rooms or expands into something closer to a chef-led cultural studio. His public Instagram (@hesen_liu) is the best place to watch which direction he takes.
