When Broadsheet calls chef Gerald Ong, he’s sitting in the dining room of his new restaurant. Just returned from his native Singapore, he’s on a high, talking about dishes he tried and flavours he’s looking to replicate when The Fifty Six opens on the top floor of Naldham House next month.

“My main inspiration comes from just trying to make the food fit the restaurant,” says Ong. “Because I’m sitting here, and I really feel like I’m back in Singapore or Hong Kong. There are these big arching windows and I see the tree lines through them, but I also see really tall skyscrapers. So, I just really want to match the food to the dining room, which is a mix of modern, traditional and eclectic.”

The venue takes its name from Queensland’s first Chinese migrants – a group of 56 labourers who arrived in Brisbane 177 years ago. Ong, whose resume includes Chairman & Yip (the Canberra outpost of Hong Kong’s Chairman restaurant) as well as Sydney restaurants Porteño and Automata, is keen to honour the history of Chinese immigration to Brisbane and the string of great Chinese restaurants already open in the city.

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When it opens, The Fifty Six will become the latest in a string of Hong Kong- and Cantonese-inspired venues, including Stan’s and Central, that have recently opened in Brisbane.

According to Ong, a shift towards regionally specific menus marks a renaissance in Australia’s appreciation of Chinese cuisine. “Originally Chinese [menus] had basically every region represented. You walk in and you order five different dishes and they’re all from different parts of China. But what people don’t realise is China is bigger than Europe, and it’s like having French food and Spanish food in one meal,” he says.

For Ong, a focus on Cantonese cuisine makes perfect sense for a Brisbane venue. It’s classified as one of China’s eight great regional cuisines and it’s also perfect for the climate. “Queensland shares a similar climate to Hong Kong, so a lot of the things that we want to use, like seafood, are mirror images of what you’d get in Hong Kong.”

He goes on to explain that Cantonese cuisine shares the same core tenets of French food: a focus on the quality of ingredients; balanced, harmonious dishes; and elegance. For Ong, this is reflected in an almost fanatical commitment to sourcing his sauces.

“I’m approaching the menu from the larder upwards. So I’m taking a look at our soy sauces, our oyster sauces, and I’m seeing where can we source the best,” says Ong. “For instance, on my travels in Singapore, I came across this brand which I’m trying to get into Australia. It’s called Kwong Cheong Thye. It’s a soy sauce manufactured in Singapore and it’s incredible, so we want to use that as the base. It is almost like [using the right] olive oil in a Western restaurant.”

When it comes to oyster sauce, he’s taking matters into his own hands, cooking oysters for three days, adding aromatics and dry oysters, then blending and caramelising it all into a rich condiment. Among other things, Ong will serve it with steak in a pepper-oyster-champagne sauce for a dish that’s a throwback to carpetbag steak.

Taking inspiration from his time at Porteño, Ong is cooking vegetables over coals to create dishes such as numbing eggplant and instituting a dry-ageing program for meat. When it comes to dumplings, sous-chef Ka Wai Kwok will lead the charge with his 20 years’ experience with dim sum. He’ll make prawn and mango spring rolls and crystal skin Moreton Bay bug dumplings.

The wine list will be heavy on whites and include “some interesting wines from China.”

The Fifty Six opens on the top floor of Naldham House at 33 Felix Street, Brisbane in February.

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