Singaporean chef Vincent Wong (top) has a new a la carte menu for Mercedes Me Beijing (above) given his respect for Chinese ingredients. [Photo provided to China Daily]

The 40-year-old bounced around the globe from 2008 to 2015, cooking in cities like Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Adelaide and Shanghai.

His international experiences helped him develop his own philosophy of cooking.

"The first rule is to respect natural ingredients. And the second one is playful yet common (to use common ingredients to make creative and playful dishes)," Wong says.

He cites watermelon as an example.

"We eat watermelon in summertime as a fruit. But when you put the watermelon in a vacuum bag to slow cook, it will taste like meat. I've seen people in China fry the watermelon peel as a dish, so my friend and I tried to plane the peel into thin slices and marinate it with ginger, so that it looks like ginger and tastes like ginger, which is interesting," he says.

"To respect tradition is not to follow it but to reinterpret it and evolve it with new perspectives."

Wong aspires to maintain dishes' original flavors but to also surprise diners with such elements as plating or texture.

"The third rule is fashion, as I think fashion designers and chefs are quite alike," Wong says.

"We chefs have knives to cut ingredients, while designers have scissors to cut the cloth-we actually share similar careers."