Gerald Ong describes beetroot as his “gateway drug” to Australia.

“I was working as a chef in Singapore,” says Ong, who was born in the south-east Asian city-state. “There was this box of beetroots, and they were just amazing to look at. I read the side of the box, and it said ‘Product of Australia’.”

That humble box of beets inspired a move to Sydney, and then onto Canberra where Ong worked for seven years at a succession of high-profile restaurants, first as sous chef at Chairman & Yip, and then exec chef at Golden Panda, Lucky Duck and Mrs Wang in that city’s Tiger Lane food precinct.

So what was his gateway drug to move to Brisbane? “The fresh seafood,” Ong says, laughing.

In February, DAP & Co, the hospitality group owned by Andrew Baturo, Denis Sheahan and Paul Piticco, will open The Fifty Six on the third floor of Naldham House with Ong in the kitchen.

The restaurant is named after the first recorded Chinese migrants in Queensland – 56 labourers who arrived in Brisbane via Sydney in 1848 – and is in part inspired by Baturo, Shehan and Piticco’s many trips to Hong Kong over the years. Ong’s menu will present his own twists on Cantonese cuisine, which he mastered during those years working in Canberra.

“I’m actually a bit of a traditionalist when it comes to Cantonese food,” Ong says. “I trained under some old-school masters who didn’t speak a word of English – I don’t speak much Cantonese so it was very much monkey see, monkey do – but I also had that second background training in Sydney in western food and modern cuisine.

“So, I wanted to showcase classic Cantonese flavours because if it’s not broken, why fix it? But also bring modern techniques to highlight Queensland produce.”

The menu has yet to be finalised but draft dishes include steamed crystal skin dumplings with Moreton Bay bug, wok-tossed Mooloolaba prawns with curry leaf and salted egg, and a curated dry ageing program for roasted meats.

Onboard is one of Ong’s former sous chefs, Ka Wai Kwok, a Hong Kong native with 20 years experience specialising in dim sum, so expect a big focus on dumplings and small plates. Ong will be fastidious in producing certain items in house, including the restaurant’s oyster sauce.

“I wanted to showcase classic Cantonese flavours because if it’s not broken, why fix it? But also bring modern techniques to highlight Queensland produce.”

The Fifty Six chef Gerald Ong

“Oyster sauce is like the vegemite of Asia,” Ong says. “It’s a three-day process – a by-product of when we smoke oysters. But the taste is not like the old days; it’s been very commercialised. We want those traditional flavours of the old way, so we’ll make our own oyster sauce.”

For drinks, there will be a 200-bottle wine list that features up-and-coming winemakers from Australia and abroad, hard-to-get European varietals, and a handful of Chinese vino. There will also be a bunch of curios poured by the glass via Coravin.

The venue’s design is again being overseen by DAP & Co regular Anna Spiro; it will feature a “sophisticated, chic” and “uncluttered” look that makes the most of Naldham House’s top-floor outlook over the river. Baturo has previously described the building as “Raffles without the rooms” and, on seeing it for the first time, Ong had the same impression.

“It really does look like Raffles Hotel from the outside,” he says. (The luxury Singaporean heritage hotel, like Naldham House, was built in the late 19th century.)

“But when you go to the top floor, and you see the tops of the trees against the arched windows and the skyscrapers in the background, you really feel like you’re back in Hong Kong or Singapore.”

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