The restaurant launched last year in Melbourne offering a broad, likeable menu of Malaysian staples. Malaysian-Australian chef Junda Khoo closely monitors the hospitality industry’s shifting tides and climbing closure rates. Chef Junda Khoo wants his new Sydney venture to be “a sharing place, with long tables”. 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.