Ho has been fascinated by cooking since he was a teenager, when he observed his neighbour, a culinary student, practising after school. He decided to follow suit and enrolled at a cooking school at 17. “It isn’t an easy career. Out of a class of 30 students, only four of us graduated as chefs. The rest switched paths,” Ho recalls.

After graduation, he worked shucking oysters in a hotel. “I was pretty good at it – I almost accepted an invitation to move to an oyster farm in Ireland and become a professional oyster shucker,” says Ho.

But a meal at – you guessed it – Amber ignited his desire to become a fine-dining chef.

“It was a mind-blowing lunch. The innovative flavour combinations – from the foie gras lollipop to the langoustine with uni – shocked me. I instinctively sat taller in respect for the dishes and the atmosphere,” says Ho. Needless to say, he didn’t think twice when an opportunity arose at Amber shortly after in 2017.

Ho worked at Amber as a demi chef for two years. He then spent two years at L’Atelier de Joel Robuchon in Taipei and Arbor in Hong Kong before returning to Amber as chef de cuisine in 2021.

Vegan soy butter and house-fermented miso are some of the unique creations Ho has introduced to the menu since then. “Fermentation helps reduce food wastage – one of our sustainability goals,” says Ho, then adds with a laugh: “But I had failed so many times I almost gave up.”

The unique humidity and temperature requirements for fermentation meant that Ho couldn’t rely on foreign cookbooks; he needed to formulate his own recipe.

When he isn’t transforming Amber’s kitchen into a fermentation lab, he finds inspiration and comfort at these six restaurants around the city.