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Loong Oon Owner & Head Chef, Amah

IN CONVERSATION WITH

 

Loong Oon
Owner & Head Chef, Amah

Words by TIFFANY JADE
Photos By JAKE RODEN

“I remember my grandmother cooking a traditional Chinese dish; a fish ball soup. It’s a labour in-tensive dish and I remember how much she loved to make it for me every time I visited. She would prep morning til night, going to the market early and spending the day in the kitchen with me at her side. It brought her so much joy to see our enjoyment of her food.”

Loong Oon’s earliest memories are filled with the rituals of preparing and sharing meals. The layered generational impressions of his Chinese-Malay origins have provided a touchstone for his adult years in which he continues to leverage a culture that, like many, orbits the social and sensorial connections established through foods nourishing significance.

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We thought it was a great idea for the Chatswood crowd who we thought would appreciate the capacity food has for transcending culture and simply bringing people together.

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Coming full circle from those early moments with his grandmother, Loong is today own-er and Head Chef of Amah, a thriving Malaysian restaurant located in the vibrant First Floor District Dining Precinct at the Chatswood Interchange. Surrounded by the swirl-ing urbanity of downtown Chatswood, Amah (which is Chinese for ‘Grandmother’) is a restaurant that exists as both a steward of stories and a contemporary beacon, a place where Loong leans into his interests in art and design to create culinary feats that recon-cile history, innovation and visual composition all at once.

“We thought Chatswood would be a really great location for an upper market restaurant,” says Loong of his and his business partner’s decision to set up a restaurant of Amah’s calibre in Chatswood. “There are a lot of great cheap eats here so we thought we could bring something different. Something that would educate younger generations on the impact of quality ingredients.

 

 

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