Victor Liong Is Playing His Greatest Hits at Lee Ho Fook Sydney

It’s Monday, and Victor Liong is surprisingly at ease for someone who’s about to raise the curtain on one of the year’s biggest restaurant openings. But the glorious Sydney weather seems to be working for him.

“It doesn’t look like it, but I’ve been running!” the star Melbourne chef tells Broadsheet. “I’ve been jogging around the harbour. It’s so nice to revisit a city I’m familiar with, just to see how much it’s changed.”

Though his sunny demeanour says otherwise, Liong hasn’t lived here for more than a decade. He left to open Lee Ho Fook in 2013, now one of Melbourne’s essential Chinese dining experiences. But he’s back to open one here, as the headliner of Trippas White’s new hospitality precinct inside the heritage Porter House building on Castlereagh Street. Liong will split his time between the two restaurants, with his sister Nianci Liong (ex-Momofuku Seiobo) managing the Sydney operation.

“My wife and I first saw the space and we immediately thought, ‘This kinda looks like Lee Ho Fook’. The bare bricks, the ceiling. They both used to be warehouses, built around the same time. It was a bit of a no-brainer.”

Liong has opened three new restaurants in as many years (the one-two punch of Silk Spoon and Bossa Nova Sushi last year; Quenino, the Southeast Asian diner below the Artyzen Hotel in Singapore, the year before that), but he says this one’s different. It’s both familiar and uncharted territory – but that was a big part of the allure.

“In Melbourne, we’re a small, almost boutique operation. Here, there are more moving parts. It’s a bigger space. We’re doing more services. We eventually want to do breakfast – but what does Lee Ho Fook breakfast look like?” he says. “It’s about trying to replicate [Lee Ho Fook] in Sydney, but also seeing what the audience wants here and letting them guide us.”

For now, he and head chef Brad Guest (ex-Shell House, Sixpenny, Cafe Paci) have no problem playing Lee Ho Fook’s greatest hits. Direct from Duckboard Place are the pickled black fungi dressed in aged black vinegar, and the golden tranches of crispy fried eggplant with red vinegar – both classics “since day one”. Also on the Sydney menu are steamed Glacier 51 toothfish bathing in spring onion sauce; Fujian fried rice with crab and scallops; and Jasmine tea custard with burnt caramel to finish.

“Those five dishes … that’s the Lee Ho Fook experience right there,” says Liong.

But those aren’t the only major imports. One is the ambient Chinese tea pairing, where courses are matched with teas from various origins and served at different temperatures – including a sparkling variety as a champagne replacement. (“Tea is as complex, interesting and gastronomic as wine,” says Liong). Another is free BYO on Mondays – a nod to suburban Aussie-Chinese restaurant dining.

The arrival of Lee Ho Fook comes at an interesting time for Chinese cuisine in Sydney. In August, Neil Perry flipped his Cantonese diner Song Bird into an Italian restaurant, Gran Torino, pointing to a reluctance among diners to pay a premium for Chinese food. Meanwhile, Lee Ho Fook is a leader in Melbourne’s Chinese fine-dining space. Can it lead in Sydney, too?

“There’s always going to be a reluctance among people to pay top dollar for stuff. That’s not just hospitality products, that’s any product,” Liong says.

“If you can deliver on the promise of what the product is, I think people will see it as fair value. But you have to work really hard to deliver what that value proposition is. Hospitality is a complex thing; it’s emotionally driven. Sometimes I don’t get it right, but that’s the nature of the game.

“Young’s Palace just opened, Grandfather’s is open now. There must be a need for this.”

Lee Ho Fook
Level 1/203 Castlereagh Street, Sydney

(02) 8236 8855

Hours:
Mon: 5.30pm–10pm
Wed: 12pm–3pm and 5.30pm–10pm
Thurs to Sat: 12pm–3pm and 5.30pm–11pm
Sun: 12pm–3pm

leehofook.com.au/home/sydney