Malaysian-Australian chef Junda Khoo closely monitors the hospitality industry’s shifting tides and climbing closure rates. Rather than batten down under dark clouds, Khoo will grow his stable of restaurants to double digits this year, snapping up the former site of Soul Dining at Wynyard, and opening his first restaurant overseas, in Jakarta.

“You always go in the opposite direction of the market,” Khoo says. The strategy isn’t based solely on the chef’s gut feel. Khoo moved to Australia as a teenager, lived independently for the final years of high school, completed a double degree in finance and project management, and worked in the banking sector before he followed his heart and stomach to hospitality.

“You get better deals with [commercial real estate] agents,” Khoo says of his approach in a challenging trading environment.

The first step of his expansion strategy is to bring Ho Liao – the ambitious restaurant brand he launched last year in Melbourne – to his adopted hometown of Sydney. The upmarket Soul Dining, which opened in the city in December 2023 but closed earlier this year, left a near-new kitchen and a dark, moody dining room.

The Ho Liao concept is pitched at the current market. The dining room is being stripped, a brighter colour palate replacing the charcoal-daubed walls. “I want it to be a sharing place, with long tables,” Khoo says.

With Ho Jiak restaurants in Chinatown, Town Hall and Strathfield, Amah restaurant in Chatswood, and Tam Jiak at the new Sydney Fish Market, the northern end of the Sydney CBD is uncharted territory for Khoo. With “more tourists and corporates”, the Wynyard precinct clientele is fresh turf for Ho Liao, which offers an assortment from all of Khoo’s menus.

“It’s really a best-of menu,” Khoo says. “The assam nyonya fish from Haymarket, the roast duck and laksa bombs from Town Hall, char siu beef ribs from Chatswood and Teow Chew sashimi from the Fish Market.”

There’ll be some menu wriggle room, with specials to rotate dishes such as Khoo’s salted duck egg prawn toast.

The chef is also working on the launch menu for the upcoming Jakarta branch of Ho Jiak, which opens in December. The “coals to Newcastle” challenge of taking Asian food to Asia has additional challenges with the Indonesian market. “We’re finding ways to use chicken substitutes for pork,” he says. The chef will also add his idiosyncratic twists on a few Indonesian dishes.

Khoo’s quirky cooking style has driven expansion since he opened the first Ho Jiak in Strathfield in 2015 with business partner William Xie, but the chef chalks much of the success up to the local produce he’s been lucky enough to work with. “People ask, ‘why does this dish taste better than it does in Malaysia?’ and it’s because of the Australian produce.”

Expanding restaurants when many in the industry are contracting isn’t without its challenges for Khoo. “I’m not killing it, it’s killing me,” he says. “But I’m contributing to the economy.”