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Joseph Koh

At Jun’s, which opened in Dubai in the summer of 2022, chef-partner Kelvin Cheung has been consistently dazzling diners with cooking that weaves various Asian influences into every dish.
This year, not even three years after opening, the restaurant jumped 14 spots to No. 7 on the Middle East & North Africa’s (Mena) 50 Best Restaurants list.
Diners are drawn to Cheung’s “borderless” approach – for which he seeks to capture the soul of Chinese flavours without boxing himself in. Dig further into the menu at Jun’s and you will encounter North American, Indian and Filipino influences.
Cheung grew up in a traditional Chinese household in Toronto, Canada and studied in Chicago. Following that, he trained in France and headed restaurants in North America and India before making his big move to Dubai to open Jun’s.

The philosophy of the restaurant – which he named after his son Bodhi (his Chinese name is Jun) – is what Cheung describes as “third-culture cooking”, a culmination of all his globetrotting adventures.
“It isn’t Chinese, pan-Asian or fusion. It’s basically my life journey [as] a Chinese-born Canadian who experienced identity conflict, caught between different cultural expectations and social norms, but has now embraced his heritage fully.”

His take on the popular Indian street food pani puri features poached lobster, a Macanese-inspired curry sauce, tamarind fluid gel and aguachile.
Cheung’s freewheeling “dim sum” is a trio of snacks that draws inspiration from Filipino-style breakfasts, salmon bagels and stir-fried clams in black bean sauce.
If people do categorise the food at Jun’s as “fusion”, Cheung hopes his cooking can give the word a more positive meaning than it often has.
As I cooked more, I’d often recall familiar flavours or notes from my life
Kelvin Cheung
“It had such a bad rep in the 1990s because chefs were mashing random ingredients from the East and West together without retaining an honesty in their cooking,” he says.
Instead of tapping into trendy ingredients to capture attention, Cheung pays homage to different cultures. Every dish on Jun’s menu originates from a personal memory.
His spin on kinilaw – a Filipino marinated raw seafood dish – harks back to his first trip to the Philippines, while the boba crème brûlée speaks of the time he opened a short-lived bubble tea shop with his former Taiwanese partner.

“As I cooked more, I’d often recall familiar flavours or notes from my life, whether that’s char siu fan [barbecued pork rice] at my dad’s restaurant or my mom’s Singapore chilli crab,” he says.
It is perhaps no surprise that Cheung is a third-generation restaurateur.
Most of his childhood was spent in his parents’ Chinese restaurant in downtown Toronto, which served dim sum and homestyle Hakka dishes gleaned from his grandmother’s signatures.
“My brother and I couldn’t be left home alone, so we were both thrown into the restaurant. At age four, we made almond and fortune cookies, and that was our introduction to the business,” he says.
His parents and grandmother took the lead, and when the restaurant began to gain ground, his grandfather, who was running a restaurant in Hong Kong at the time, migrated to Canada to help out.
The Cheung family eventually opened more formal Chinese establishments, introducing Canada to fine ingredients such as abalone and bird’s nest.

Cheung, who had a front-row seat to his family’s growing restaurant empire, knew early on that he wanted to cook for a living.
“The only thing I looked forward to after school was getting back into the kitchen and watching my father run this beautiful symphony,” he says. “The energy from the kitchen and floor ignited my passion.”
But one thing stood in the way: his parents’ desire for him to pursue a career in medicine. They knew the sacrifices they had made in their line of work, and did not wish the same for their son.
His father encouraged Cheung to train in other kitchens for a year before he gave his blessing.
“I’d work for free at different restaurants every day, and when I proved to him that I could do it, he finally let me drop out of pre-med and take on culinary school,” Cheung says.
I wanted to make a mark on Dubai’s landscape with something completely original
Jun’s Kelvin Cheung
He has not looked back since, forging a career across the globe, including opening a number of concepts in India. But Dubai remains the city where he can fully express his artistry.
“As I looked at the world, not only from a culinary standpoint but from the point of where I wanted to be in the future, I couldn’t overlook the exponential growth that Dubai was experiencing. It was a city that offered chefs a platform to serve something of high standards, hence it’s the perfect place to establish a brand,” he says.
Cheung spotted an opportunity to break new ground in the desert city, as top chefs from around the world had focused heavily on globalised cuisines, from Italian to Japanese and Korean.
“I wanted to make a mark on Dubai’s landscape with something completely original, where you can’t quite categorise the cooking,” he says.
As his identity took shape, he was also certain about veering away from fine dining. “I wanted to cook food that held the same high standards when it comes to techniques and ingredients, but ultimately it had to be comforting,” he says.

Jun’s has a variety of menus for guests to pick from, from à la carte to business lunch sets to an 11-course tasting menu.
Given that the dishes straddle several cuisines, one might find it hard to believe that Cheung’s starting point is often his Chinese roots.
Guided by the belief that Chinese cooking is one of the world’s most technically complex cuisines in terms of balancing flavours and textures, he is “always thinking about the sweet, savoury, spicy, umami and sour elements, along with crunchy, soft and cold textures” when building a plate. And he still thinks in Cantonese when ideating.
Cheung’s nuanced approach to his heritage extends to Jun’s space in Downtown Dubai, which offers views of the Burj Khalifa tower. There are no blazing red lanterns or gaudy dragons, but the interiors draw from Chinese culture all the same. The green stone floors are reminiscent of jade, while the larger-than-life pendant lamps were inspired by rice bowls.


It has been quite a journey since Jun’s opening. Initially guests did not quite grasp the concept because the food did not fit neatly within one category. But Cheung has since won them over, earning a mention – although not yet a star – in the Michelin Guide, as well as breaking the top 10 in the Mena 50 Best Restaurants list.
The chef is now set for bigger things. “Because we’ve created something so different, I’m able to ‘plug and play’ the brand into many markets now,” he says.
In the works are a second Jun restaurant in the region and new concepts he has been dreaming of.
Despite these grand plans, what drives Cheung is his family. One of his favourite moments was when his young son beamed with pride as he tried his best to explain to his teachers and friends about Jun’s making the Mena 50 Best Restaurants list for the first time.
“This memory will always stick with me,” he says. “The long hours, the time away from them, it’s all really worth it.”


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Food and Drinks

Chinese-Canadian chef wows Dubai with ‘third culture’ cooking inspired by his journey

Jun’s take on the Filipino raw fish dish kinilaw. Photo: Jun’s

Kelvin Cheung with his son at Jun’s. The Michelin-listed Dubai restaurant is impressing critics with its comfort food that shows influences of different Asian cuisines. Photo: Jun’s

Kelvin Cheung has been dazzling diners at Jun’s with his “borderless” approach to cooking. Photo: Jun’s

Cheung’s take on the popular Indian street food pani puri is packed with a poached lobster, Macanese-inspired curry sauce, tamarind fluid gel and agua. Photo: Jun’s

Jun’s take on kinilaw, a traditional Filipino marinated seafood dish, uses Japanese sweet prawn dressed in a calamansi and ginger vinaigrette. Photo: Jun’s

Cheung grew up in a restaurant family, and knew from a young age he wanted to spend his career in the kitchen. Photo: Jun’s

A mapo burrata dish at Jun’s. Cheung says he is always thinking about how to balance flavours and textures. Photo: Jun’s

The interior of Jun’s, in Downtown Dubai, features green stone floors reminiscent of jade in a nod to Cheung’s Chinese roots. Photo: Jun’s

The pendant lamps at Jun’s are inspired by rice bowls. Photo: Jun’s

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Food & Drink

At Jun’s in Dubai, Kelvin Cheung’s ‘borderless’ cooking draws on influences from the Philippines to India for ‘completely original’ dishes


At Jun’s in Dubai, Kelvin Cheung’s ‘borderless’ cooking draws on influences from the Philippines to India for ‘completely original’ dishes.


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.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}At Jun’s in Dubai, Kelvin Cheung’s ‘borderless’ cooking draws on influences from the Philippines to India for ‘completely original’ dishes

At Jun’s in Dubai, Kelvin Cheung’s ‘borderless’ cooking draws on influences from the Philippines to India for ‘completely original’ dishes