Cantonese cuisine gets a modern interpretation at The Fifty Six, Naldham House’s crown-jewel restaurant

From the moment Andrew Baturo, Paul Piticco and Denis Sheahan of DAP & Co. first set foot on the top floor of Naldham House, they knew instantly what kind of venue they wanted to transform the space into.

“Right from the word go, there was no doubt in all of our minds that it was going to be a Cantonese restaurant,” says Andrew. “It reminded all of us of our visits to Hong Kong, where a lot of the great restaurants and bars are actually up high and have that urban feel. It just felt like it couldn’t be anything else.”

Envisioned as the premium capstone of DAP & Co.’s ambitious vertical dining precinct (which Andrew describes as a quintessentially Brisbane venue), the restaurant needed to not only reflect its heritage surroundings, but also honour the history of the city that Naldham House pays homage to. So the team went digging into Brisbane’s formative years, unearthing a tale that proved to be the inspirational spark that allowed the silhouette of the concept to coalesce into something more palpable.

“We really dove into the history of Naldham House,” Andrew tells us. “And as we did that research we came across the roots of Brisbane’s Chinese community and the origins of the 56 immigrants who branched off from their massive journey to New South Wales and Sydney and made the trek up to Brisbane. 

“Those 56 people became such an integral and important part of the history of Brisbane – giving that recognition to the Chinese community that made up a massive part of Brisbane’s early fabric was a wonderful synergy for us.”

The Fifty Six is named in honour of that first wave of Chinese immigrants, paying homage to the significant impact Chinese culture and cuisine has had on Australia’s food landscape as a whole. The restaurant officially opens tonight, Thursday February 13, joining European-inspired Naldham House Brasserie & Terrace and Club Felix as the final piece of the multifaceted precinct’s offering. 

Food & Drink

The Fifty Six

Level 2, 33 Felix Street, Brisbane City

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With the idea of The Fifty Six firmly in hand, the DAP & Co. brains trust put its attention toward crafting a visual identity that was congruent with the project’s overall aesthetic vision, but was distinct enough to stand out on its own terms. 

Food & Drink

The Fifty Six

Level 2, 33 Felix Street, Brisbane City

More Info

Once again the crew turned to acclaimed interior designer Anna Spiro to spearhead the design effort. Anna has conjured a dining space that is vibrant and opulent, with cushy gem-toned banquettes, hexagonal booths, turquoise tables, yellow chairs, patterned rugs and art on the walls. The aesthetic is bolstered by existing heritage elements, such as arched windows and a tiled balcony that can hold 48 guests.

“The concepts inside Naldham House all needed to feel like they were related to each other,” explains Andrew. “Obviously, through Anna’s involvement in the design, you can see that colour has become quite a prevalent feature of what we’ve done on each level. But they also had to feel different and they had to feel like they made sense.

“We loved the idea of [The Fifty Six] not feeling like a typical Cantonese restaurant – we wanted it to feel modern, we wanted to feature the big windows with the canopies of the trees visible outside and we wanted it to feel generous in terms of the space. You’ll still feel the activity of what’s going on in the kitchen – the noise, the smells and the rambunctiousness of it all.” 

A headhunting process resulted in the appointment of Singapore-born Gerald Ong as The Fifty Six’s head chef. Gerald, who honed his craft at the likes of Chairman & Yip, Mrs Wang, Lucky Duck, Golden Panda and Tigerlane, earned the top job thanks to his knack for blending modern Cantonese sensibilities with traditional culinary philosophies.

“We were really diligent and very specific about who we wanted to run that kitchen,” Andy reveals. “We had the interview with him and we all really liked him, and then he came up and he cooked for us and it was the first time I felt that I was close to what I had experienced personally in Hong Kong. I was blown away.

“Gerald has an almost unfathomable comprehension of dressings, sauces and soups, of balance and delicacy. It seems simple, but there is so much technique and experience involved – and not just technical cooking experience, but life experience that goes into it. Gerald has these unbelievable stories about where he first came across this particular dressing or sauce, or where he was taught a particular technique.”

The Fifty Six’s menu begins with a mandate. To Gerald, respecting the foundational pillars of Cantonese cuisine while utilising the finest Australian produce is the key driver behind the kitchen’s methodology.

“All great cuisines of the world have a very strong core philosophy and Cantonese cuisine has three pillars at its core,” Gerald explains. “The three pillars of Cantonese food are the freshness of the ingredients, the balance of the flavours and then the elegance of the dish. So it’s about using the lens of Cantonese food and the integrity of Australian produce to produce something that isn’t fusion, but more of an evolution – we’re respecting old traditions, but trying to evolve it to today’s time and place.”

Aside from the soy sauce, which is being imported from Singapore, Gerald is making as many sauces in house as possible, including the restaurant’s oyster sauce, hoi sin and XO sauce. What results is an offering that pays homage to the cultural influence Chinese immigration has had on Queensland, delivering a savvy reinterpretation of time-honoured recipes. 

Guests can whet their appetite with the likes of drunken prawn tarts and quail tea eggs with Avruga caviar, before filling their table with an assortment of dim sum dishes (crafted by Ka Wai Kwok, The Fifty’s Six’s own dim sum master), including scallop and prawn siu mai, field mushroom and chestnut dumplings, and xiao long bao.

Up next are an assort of cold and hot entrees, with cold cut silken tofu with pi dan and green peppers, baked Queensland blue swimmer crab with calamansi, battered prawns with salted egg butter, and moo shu duck pancakes with cucumber and hoisin being early stand-outs. 

Mains like sticky cumin Margra lamb riblets with eggplant, Queensland bay lobster pao fan in superior broth and O’Connor beef tenderloin and scallions with black pepper and shiraz are bona fide blockbuster options, but the dry-aged five-spiced half duck with Davidson Plum sauce, and the honey-glazed Berkshire pork char siu are toast-worthy roasts worth your consideration.

As with any DAP & Co. venue, drinks are a major point of focus. Bar managers Shawn Brown and Reece Van Rijen have penned a beverage selection laden with innovative cocktails boasting Cantonese-inspired flavours, as well as a far-reaching wine list that includes everything from rieslings, gruner veltliner and ‘aromatics of intrigue’ to skin-contact wines, rosé and even a clutch of P.R.C reds.