Personalities

Chris Yeo

Chris 's Links:

Owner/Culinary Director

Owner/ Culinary Director Straits Restaurant + Lounge XINO Restaurant + Lounge

Few restaurateurs get their start as a hairdresser, but Chris Yeo, Culinary Director and Owner of Straits Restaurants + Lounge and XINO Restaurants + Lounge, was once more familiar with coiffing hair than shredding coconut. Fortunately, giving up his shears has resulted in Yeo bringing authentic, yet modern Singaporean cuisine to the dining landscape.
A graduate of Singapore’s Hotel and Catering School Chris decided that the industry was not for him and left Singapore to attend the Vidal Sassoon Academy in London. After a five year stint in London, he headed west to San Francisco and, in 1980, opened Yeo’s Hair Design in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood.
Drawing upon his hospitality training as well as his love of good food, Yeo realized his dream of bringing the cuisine of Singapore to the Bay Area, and in 1987 he opened Straits Café on Geary Boulevard in San Francisco, followed by a sleek Palo Alto location in 1998. After opening his second location Chris made the decision to focus on restaurants full-time, much to the disappointment of his salon clients. In 2003 Chris opened a more refined version of Straits on San Jose’s acclaimed Santana Row, as well as another Bay Area location in Burlingame the following year. The original San Francisco restaurant relocated to the Westfield San Francisco Centre in 2006.
In September 2005, Yeo launched a new restaurant concept on Santana Row. XINO Restaurant + Lounge boasts a spacious and urban feel that was designed to showcase a new concept in Chinese cuisine - a Chinese restaurant that was elegant, sophisticated and accessible to all. The dramatic space matches the exotic menu of updated “New Experience” Chinese classics like dim sum, Peking duck, and smoked sea bass.
Yeo’s acclaimed restaurant collection expanded beyond the chef’s adopted home in California when, in May 2008, Yeo partnered with GRAMMY award-winning artist and actor Chris “Ludacris” Bridges to bring Straits’ modern Singaporean menu to Atlanta, Georgia. Straits also entered the Texas market via Houston in September 2009. The most recent addition is the second XINO Restaurant + Lounge that opened in Santa Monica in August 2010.
Visitors to Straits Restaurants are taken with Yeo’s dishes that integrate the bright flavors and cooking styles of Thai, Indonesian, Chinese, Malay, Indian and Nonya (a result of marriages between Chinese men and Malay women generations ago, and considered the true native style of cooking) cuisines. He also utilizes the exotic spices, fresh herbs, and the freshest ingredients he can find, whether it’s for the daily soup or his “poh pai” spring rolls.
Outside the kitchen, Yeo is known for being a generous as he is energetic, and is involved in many professional and non-profit organizations in the Bay Area. A founding member of the ACA (Asian Chefs Association), he works closely with this professional organization that is designed to unify Asian chefs through various charity events. Additionally, Chris has a long-standing involvement with the CYC (formally Chinatown Youth Center, now Community Youth Center), the recipient of all proceeds raised during the annual Straits & SINO golf tournament to benefit at-risk youth in the San Francisco Bay Area community.
Some of Yeo’s other professional accomplishments include Cooking of Singapore which he co-authored with Joyce Jue. Yeo has also served as a guest chef at The Smithsonian Institute, the James Beard House, and the Singaporean embassies to the United States and the United Nations, among others. Yeo resides in Hillsborough, California, with his wife Kelly and their two young children.