From Char Koay Teow to Chilli Crab: Five Essential Ho Jiak Orders

Over the last decade, Junda Khoo has built Ho Jiak from a single Sydney restaurant into a group spanning multiple venues across Sydney and Melbourne.

The menu draws on different chapters of Khoo’s life and career. Some dishes go back to the Malaysian street food he grew up eating, others to family recipes, while newer additions leave more room for experimentation.

“The first restaurant I opened, I was trying to showcase the foods from the streets of Malaysia,” says Khoo. “The second one I did was to pay homage to my grandmother, so a lot of her home-cooked dishes. Then, when we came to Town Hall, I thought, it’s time to push the boundaries and see whether I’m good enough to create a menu that’s my own.”

Today, that evolution is reflected across Ho Jiak’s menus. If you’re visiting for the first time, these are the five dishes Khoo recommends ordering. Better yet, Broadsheet and NAB have teamed up for Bookings With Benefits, a dining program that gives you $50 off the bill when you spend $250 or more on your NAB credit or debit card at selected venues across the country, including Ho Jiak.

Char koay teow

If there’s one dish synonymous with Ho Jiak, it’s the char koay teow. Khoo has been serving his version for 11 years, despite some early criticism.

“When I first put it out, a lot of people were saying, ‘It’s not traditional; it’s not authentic.’ We were getting a lot of criticism for that, but we stuck to it.”

Rather than replicating the better-known Penang style, Khoo looked to the soy-heavy versions he remembers eating at wet markets with his grandmother. More than a decade later, it’s become Ho Jiak’s top-selling dish.

Depending on the venue, it’s topped with prawns, mud crab or king crab, but the foundations remain the same: intense wok hei, crispy pork crackling and meticulously prepared noodles. “We shred them or we hand-pick them strand by strand,” he says.

Laksa bombs

For a taste of Ho Jiak’s more playful side, order the laksa bombs.

The idea came to Khoo unexpectedly. “It just popped up in my head one day to put all the elements from a bowl of laksa into a dumpling so they can be enjoyed in one bite.”

Each dumpling contains more than 40 ingredients, compressing the flavours of an entire laksa into a single mouthful. Six years after debuting on the menu, it remains one of Ho Jiak’s signature dishes.

“The moment it hit the menu, it blew up,” says Khoo.

Chilli crab

For Khoo, chilli crab is inseparable from childhood memories.

“Having crab in Malaysia was only during celebrations or a special occasion,” he says. “It is nostalgic to me as someone living here in Australia [who grew] up in Malaysia.”

It’s become a celebratory dish at Ho Jiak, too. “Whenever someone has a birthday or something to celebrate, they will get this dish,” he says.

Served with Northern Territory crab and Khoo’s house-made chilli sauce, it’s now the restaurant’s top-selling live seafood offering, with the venue regularly serving dozens of crabs a day. “I make the chilli sauce, but the crab itself does all the talking,” he says.

Moutai roast duck

A newer addition to the menu, the Moutai (China’s national liquor) roast duck draws on both Chinese and Malaysian traditions.

“Our roast duck is a mix between a Peking duck and a Malaysian roast duck,” says Khoo.

Victorian ducks are dry-aged for around 10 days before roasting and finished with an oil bath to achieve crisp skin. They’re served with julienned vegetables, pancakes and a house-made hoisin sauce infused with the Chinese rice spirit.

“In Malaysia or a lot of places, they just serve you the usual plain hoisin sauce,” says Khoo. “But we make ours with Moutai.”

Bone marrow rendang with roti

The bone marrow rendang reflects Khoo’s interest in applying Australian produce to Malaysian cooking. “I’ve been here for like 30 years,” he says. “Every time we go to the pub, it’s a novelty to order the bone marrow.”

That eventually sparked an idea: what if rendang was made with bone marrow instead of the more conventional cuts of beef?

“Australian beef is one of the best in the world,” says Khoo. “The bone marrow has the right amount of oil and everything to it as well. Because of that, it elevates the rendang to the next level.”

The Broadsheet Dining Program Special Offer of a $50 discount when you spend $250 or more is available when you dine at a Participating Restaurant from January 13 to December 16, 2026. To be eligible for the Discount Offer, you must make a booking via the NAB Exclusive Booking Link for the Participating Restaurant, which is found on the landing page, and spend a minimum of $250 on your NAB credit or debit card. The Discount Offer will apply at the Participating Restaurant when you pay the final bill amount including GST and service fees and charges (if any) with your NAB credit card (includes a digital NAB credit card). The Discount Offer is only valid once per booking and will not apply to any split bills and cannot be used in conjunction with any other offers. For the full Terms and Conditions of this offer, please click here.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with NAB.