In 2014, I opened the doors to my first restaurant, Ho Jiak Strathfield, alongside my business partner, William Xie. William and I were the owners, but I was also a chef – the untrained, self-taught head chef. Ten years after dropping everything, William and I have opened three Ho Jiak restaurants: Strathfield, where I brought Malaysian street food recipes to a food court in Sydney, and where I found my confidence as a chef; Haymarket, where the story is about honouring the legacy of my amah (grandmother) and the home-cooked food I grew up on; and Town Hall, where I have tried to push the boundaries of Malaysian food by bringing my own ideas to a menu for the first time. They are all Malaysian restaurants, but my cooking philosophy isn’t about being Malaysian. It’s about ‘ho jiak’, which means ‘delicious’ in Hokkien. I named my restaurants Ho Jiak because deliciousness has always been the most important thing to me. I’m not a diplomat or representative of Malaysian food. I’m not trying to be traditional or authentic. My food can be traditional, it can be authentic, it can be modern – it can be anything, but it has to be delicious. It has to be .
