Lap Nguyen Cen and Cue Phuong Nguyen are the parents of famous chef, Luke Nguyen. According to sources, the family escaped Vietnam by boat to Thailand in search of a new life in 1977.
When they arrived in Thailand, they were sent to live in a Thai refugee camp, and that was where Luke was born. The family moved again to Australia and settled in Cabramatta, Sydney.
Lap Nguyen Cen and Cue Phuong Nguyen owned a restaurant called ‘Pho Cay Du’ in Cabramatta for 15 years, where Luke learned the fundamentals of Vietnamese cooking from.
“Because I’ve always known I wanted to open up a restaurant and I grew up in a restaurant, I know how hard it is in terms of how much work: you don’t have weekends, you work through holidays and Christmas, as as soon as I finished high school I went traveling for one year, just myself and my backpack. I went to 14 different countries on my own,” Luke Nguyen once shared.