Corona So

Corona So is Director and Instructor for Living Cuisine. Born in Hong Kong, Corona first arrived in Melbourne in 1988 and settled permanently from 1998. She is married to a native-born Australian.

Corona took a great interest in food from a very young age. At the age of eight, her desire when she grew up was to become a food critic. She learnt cooking from her mother in her teenage years and continued to develop her cooking skills since then. Besides Chinese cuisine, she has adopted many other cuisines, with Japanese as her major area of interest.

Coming from Hong Kong, a city where east meets west, Corona was able to explore and sample high quality Chinese cuisine, as well as many Asian and European cuisines. In addition to her continuous researching and adapting new ideas, she has broadened her knowledge of food and cooking by attending cooking classes by various reputable chefs and teachers.

Corona took up Japanese cooking about 10 years ago, when she was attracted to the light flavour and healthy characteristic of the Japanese cuisine.  Throughout the last 10 years, Corona attended multiple cooking courses with Japanese teachers, the most significant one being the Japanese Cuisine Intensive Course for professional cooks offered by Japanese Culinary Institute, Sydney.  She studied under master chef Naoki Nishimoto and completed the course in April 2009.  Corona has also travelled to Japan a number of times where she sampled many types of Japanese cuisine from different geographical regions.

Corona is part of the Kansha Advisory Council that contributes to Elizabeth Andoh (author of Washoku: Recipes from the Japanese Home Kitchen, 2006 IACP Award winner) 's forthcoming new book Kansha: Celebrating Japan's Vegetarian Traditions. 

Corona holds an Masters degree in Business Administration and a Bachelor of Science and speaks three languages.