Junda Khoo is the chef and restaurateur behind beloved Malaysian restaurant Ho Jiak, which now has four venues across Sydney. But his path to professional cooking was far from conventional.

This week on Broadsheet Melbourne: Around Town, Khoo dives into what sparked his career move from the banking world to the hospitality industry. Though he credits a love of food to his amah (grandmother), it was actually cooking television shows that inspired him to get into the kitchen and challenge the meaning of “authentic” Malaysian food.

He also shares how the Ho Jiak empire came to life; details on his new cookbook Ho Jiak: A Taste of Malaysia and a three-storey venue coming soon to Melbourne; plus, the most memorable meal he’s had recently.

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On falling in love with cooking:
“A lot of people say ‘oh your grandmother made you fall in love with cooking’. I say no, my grandmother made me fall in love with food. Being in Sydney, alone, having to fend for myself the first two years and watching all these cooking programs and cooking for myself at home. That’s what made me fall in love with cooking.”

On a simple hack for cooking at home:
“My biggest hack is to do less. Less is more, keep it simple and rely on equipment.” Khoo went into detail on his favourite kitchen hack in a recent piece with Broadsheet.

On the dish he’s most proud of at Ho Jiak:
“Definitely the laksa bombs … at that time, every Malaysian restaurant had laksa on the menu. What I saw was, every time someone ordered a bowl of laksa, they would be full.

“If we could actually make a bowl of laksa into one bite, how would that turn out? We decided on making a dumpling, we put the prawns, the chicken, the egg noodles, the vermicelli and everything into a dumpling so that you could enjoy it in one bite.”

On his most memorable recent meal:
“One of the most memorable meals that I had last year was at a restaurant called New Pioneer Palace in Lakemba. It’s an old school traditional Chinese restaurant in Lakemba. The dish that we had there was red braised abalone with sea cucumber.”

On his much anticipated first Melbourne venue:
“It’s also my biggest one. The ground floor is going to showcase Malaysian street food … [and] on the first floor, that would be where we showcase the modern Malaysian side of things. So laksa bombs or our Caesar salad, stuff like that. The second floor rooftop bar is where I pay homage to my grandmother again, and that's where her food is going to be served.”