Ho Jiak

Currently my Number 1 Restaurant in Sydney for 2018 Ho Jiak serves Malaysian Cuisine like comfort food you get to eat in their family home. The technique in the cooking is top notch and the Malaysian flavours may cause your eyes to roll into your head, your toes to curl and for you to scream out “yes yes yes.”
Review is up on Spooning Australia.

The place is located very close to Chinatown and Paddy’s Market. I went there for weekday lunch. Since I came early, around 11.30am, there were only few people dined there (then became crowded after I finished lunch. Understandable since the food was outstanding! Everything I had was delicious. Really love their Indomie goreng. The spiciness is perfect!
My other favourite dish: mud crab cooked in salted duck egg yolk. Amazing! You can add man tao to be eaten together. Perfect combo.
The Nasi Lemak Jumbo is also really delicious and can be suitable as a shared dish.
Make sure to check the spiciness level as it’s different between one dish to another.
As for the drink, I love the shaken milk coffee. Quite strong and aromatic.

Ho Jiak has long been in Strathfield but has now found a second home in the relatively new Haymarket location. Ho Jiak specialises in Nyonya (Chinese Malaysian Cuisine), which which we can only describe as flavour upon flavour and even more flavour! The food is inspired by the Chef’s Grandmothers home cooked meals and ingredients making for a flavorful dining experience.The interior of the restaurant is set up into two dining spaces. The downstairs portion of the restaurant reflects how we picture the streets of Penang in Malaysia to look with plenty happening – there is a hawker style set up, with splashes of colour everywhere. Beautiful artworks adorn the walls. The upstairs section takes you into Grandma’s home, with some beautiful mosaic tiles imported from Malacca, some elegantly painted family portraits and family photos. There are also Malaysian antique crockery and cookware, adding to the authentic homely feel, it definitely feels like ...read more

There’s a lot of exuberance in owner/chef Junda Khoo’s menu at the new Ho Jiak in Haymarket. The former enterprising owner of PappaRoti Australia, and chef at Sydney’s Petaling Street, is finally off the leash and cooking the food that matters to him. Building upon his Strathfield restaurant, the new Ho Jiak Haymarket is a highly personal setting. Downstairs it pays homage to Khoo’s father, with a vibrant hawker style setting that emulates the streets of Penang using street art, fabric and corrugated iron awnings, strung lights and lanterns in front of the fast-paced kitchen. A world away from the hustle and bustle of downstairs, the upstairs dining room employs trompe l’oeil with a life-size mural interior from his Mother’s family home. If you take a look around, you’ll also find photos of Khoo’s Amah (grandmother), the woman who inspired him to cook, and whose Nyonya dishes feature heavily on the ...read more