The Fifty Six is an early chance for 2025’s best restaurant opening​on February 18, 2025 at 6:05 am

Chef Gerald Ong is sitting in the dining room of The Fifty Six tasting soy sauces.

He presents two bottles. The first is Lee Kum Kee Superior Light soy sauce, a classic brand that anyone who regularly eats Chinese food will likely recognise. The second is a brand I haven’t encountered before: Kwong Cheong Thye light soy sauce.

“This stuff is naturally brewed in Singapore,” says Ong, who was born in the South-East Asian city-state, and most recently worked as executive chef at Golden Panda, Lucky Duck and Mrs Wang in Canberra’s Tiger Lane food precinct.

“The company has been operating for more than 80 years. It’s a more natural product, more bespoke. They take the time to microbatch it and age it in barrels. You can tell the difference.”

He’s right. The Kwong Cheong Thye is more balanced on the palate, subtler, and a little sweeter.

“We’ve found a distributor in Melbourne, but we’re just working on getting it into Brisbane.”

It’s this kind of consideration that’s gone into The Fifty Six, DAP & Co’s (Walter’s Steakhouse, Popolo, The Gresham) beautiful Cantonese restaurant, which opened last week atop the refurbished Naldham House in Brisbane’s CBD.

Ong is also planning on making his own oyster sauce, although limitations with Naldham’s heritage pedigree means he’s having to look at using a production kitchen elsewhere.

It’s not just the food that’s received such attention to detail. Regular DAP & Co designer Anna Spiro has lent The Fifty Six’s dining room a considered modern opulence. It’s defined by imposing velvet banquettes, turquoise glass table tops, and a line of spacious booths down one side of the space – a treatment that contrasts cleverly with the arched heritage windows, with their views across the surrounding trees, office towers and the river.

For food, Ong talks about respecting the three pillars of Cantonese cuisine – freshness, balance and elegance (he has a picture of B.B. King hanging in the kitchen because, he says, the legendary blues player did so much with just three notes).

The menu is split into snacks, soups and dim sum (Ong has brought dim sum master Ka Wai Kwok with him from Canberra); cold and hot entrees; mains; roasts and vegetable dishes; and rice and noodles.

To start, you can order scallop and prawn siu mai, xiao long bao, field mushroom and chestnut dumplings, and drunken prawn tarts.

Entrees include charred eggplant with roasted peanuts, Sichuan sauce and chilli crisp; battered prawns with salted egg butter; and moo shu duck pancakes with cucumber and house hoi sin.

The larger plates begin with mains such as wok-tossed Bannockburn chicken with wood ear mushrooms, snap peas and toasted macadamia; steamed Murray cod with fragrant soy, ginger and scallions; and Queensland bay lobster pao fan served in a superior broth that Ong is particularly fond of.

“The soup is poured table side and the rice suspends in the dish and starts to crackle,” he says. “So there’s this real audible element to it.”

The two roasted meats are Berkshire pork char siu; and dry-aged five-spice duck with Davidson plum sauce. Among the rice and noodles there’s wok-fried ho fun with beef, black bean and garlic.

It’s a menu steeped in local produce and not afraid to display plenty of flair, even when Ong is paying his respects to the fundamentals of Cantonese cuisine.

For drinks, there’s a cocktail section that remixes the classics, and an extensive wine list – compiled by sommeliers Xiangyu Jie and Marcel Thomson – that’s stacked with drops that converse with the spice and flavour of Ong’s food.

“It’s been a busy time getting prepared for the opening, but it helps that the restaurant is part of a group. You benefit from that shared knowledge,” Ong says. “With The Fifty Six, we’re trying to source the best – from the most basic elements upwards.”

The Fifty Six might be one of 2025’s first restaurant openings, but come year’s end, it will surely be in the running as one of the best.

Open Tue-Sat, 12-3pm, 5pm-late

33 Felix Street, Brisbane

thefiftysix.com.au