For a long time, Kylie Kwong's outlet for the "tsunami of grief" that followed the stillbirth of her son, Lucky, was the thing she'd always known: hard, frenetic work.
It was a celebration of Lucky, with his spirit conceptualised by Nell in the venue's central artwork; a ceiling light installation with five hand-blown glass "ghosts", called Ghost Song for Lucky Kwong. There was no ignoring Kylie Kwong when she arrived on Australia's food scene, says Maggie Beer, one of the few high-profile female cooks when Kwong blazed her trail.Suddenly, in the 2000s, Kwong was everywhere: presenting cooking shows on television, writing cookbooks that guided novices in the art of Chinese cooking and at the helm of Billy Kwong, the Sydney restaurant she began with the late Bill Granger.
Advertising broadened her world. Her boss was lesbian. "She was the first gay woman I'd ever met," Kwong says, "and she was wonderful to me." "He said, 'You're my only daughter. I want you to stay. I still don't understand your lifestyle, but it doesn't matter. I love you, I want you to stay'," recalls Kwong.
"The queues started outside Billy Kwong when my first TV program went to air on the ABC ," says Kwong. "We suddenly became known nationally and I remember standing there thinking, "Oh my goodness, look at that queue of people."But her celebrity revived deep-seated shame and guilt about her sexuality. Her friends and colleagues knew she was gay, she was living with a partner, but coming out to the world filled her with "irrational fears".
That was in 2011, the same year Nell fell pregnant, using a Tibetan donor. Kwong was so happy. "You can imagine my delight thinking about what to feed my two beloveds every single day."