Laurence Louie
Rubato | Quincy, MA
JULY 2024
In 2013, after five years as a community organizer, Laurence Louie moved to China to participate in a Chinese language program. While there, he discovered a hand-pulled noodle shop on campus and, in broken Mandarin, asked the chefs to teach him. He became an apprentice there and spent the next year learning Mandarin and hand pulling noodles. When he returned stateside, Louie was inspired to open a restaurant, but realized he needed more experience. He applied to jobs all around Boston, with his slender resume in hand, before landing at Rising Stars alum Ana Sortun’s Oleana, where he worked his way up to junior sous chef. Then, Louie moved to London in 2018, where his now-wife was working towards her master’s degree. With some help from Sortun, he found a job at Selin Kiazim’s Kyseri. Starting as a sous, he eventually became head chef at the restaurant before moving over to Oklava for the next few years.
When the pandemic hit, Louie got a call from his mother, Joyce, who owned and operated Contempo Bakery in Quincy for 22 years and was ready to retire. Figuring out what to do with the space, Louie contemplated building an upscale 25-seat Cantonese tasting menu restaurant, but after returning home and driving around Quincy, he realized that wasn’t what the neighborhood needed. An ode to his experience as a Chinese American kid growing up in Boston, Louie opened his restaurant Rubato—a Hong Kong-style cafe—in 2022. There, he combines his culinary knowledge with his mom’s homestyle recipes, modernizing classic dishes and pushing a new narrative for Chinese American cuisine with dishes like his Rubato Fun Fun with steamed rice rolls, braised brisket tendon, curry fish balls, daikon, hoisin, sesame, sriracha, scallions, and cilantro.
