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Cooking with Pichet Ong & Simon Lam

Pichet is a business partner and the pastry chef at Chang Chang. A pioneering and groundbreaking culinary artist, Pichet was born in Thailand to Chinese parents and grew up in Singapore. After atttending Yale University and receiving a master’s degree in architecture at the University of California Berkeley, he went into a career in desserts, working for Alice Waters’ Chez Panisse in Berkeley and Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Spice Market in New York. He is the author of The Sweet Spot: Asian-Inspired Desserts. His dessert creations and world travels are documented on his Instagram account, where he has more than 50,000 followers. He splits his time between NYC and Washington D.C., where he recently built a home with his partner Jase and two kittens.
First generation Chinese-American, Simon was born into the restaurant world, as his father owned an American-style Chinese restaurant in Las Vegas, NV. As a child, he grew up helping with the family business, but it wasn’t until he was studying accounting in college when he truly realized his passion, and how he’d rather be cooking. This epiphany led him to study at and receive his culinary degree from Le Cordon Bleu in Las Vegas. After graduation, he worked with Jose Andres for over a decade, first at China Poblano under esteemed chef and “Top Chef” finalist Shirley Chung, and then moved to open Jaleo inside the Cosmopolitan Hotel. Andres recruited Chef Lam to move to Washington, DC to open China Chilcano, where he cooked until the pandemic temporarily shuttered the restaurant in 2020. He quickly found a fitting position as R&D concept chef at NiHao, contemporary Chinese eatery in Baltimore which was named one of Esquire Magazine’s “Best New Restaurants” that year. Peter Chang then tapped Chef Lam as head chef for his recently-opened, already-acclaimed Chang Chang in nearby Dupont Circle. Under his tenure, Chang Chang was named one of Washingtonian Magazine’s 100 Very Best Restaurants of 2023, and received a stellar review from Washington Post’s Tom Sietsema.

