For Kelvin Cheung, the kitchen has always been part of life. He grew up in family-run restaurants, started cooking before most kids knew what work meant, and learned early that nothing comes without discipline.

Choosing to build everything on his own terms, Kelvin took the harder road. He worked relentlessly, often juggling multiple jobs, pushing through long hours, uncertainty, and moments of real struggle.

Today, Kelvin is the chef and founder of Jun’s, a Michelin Guide–listed restaurant in Dubai, as well as Jooksing and the in-house 852 Bakery. At Jun's, his cooking reflects a life lived between cultures — Chinese heritage, Canadian upbringing, and years spent moving through different kitchens and cities.

At Jun’s, every dish carries memory, identity, and emotion, shaped by Kelvin's experience. In this conversation, Kelvin talks about family, failure, persistence, and why curiosity and the willingness to keep learning are the most important ingredients in any kitchen.

— Kelvin, you have been immersed in the food industry for almost your entire life. But despite that, at one point, you chose a completely different path and decided to become a doctor. Is that right?

— I didn’t really choose it. It was a common, traditional Chinese thing, where parents would map out career paths for their children. My brother was supposed to be the engineer, my sister was supposed to be the lawyer, and I was supposed to be the doctor.

I did enjoy the field, though. In high school and college, I excelled in math and science, and I genuinely liked it. Even when I went to medical school, it wasn’t difficult for me. I was doing very well grade-wise.

But the passion was never really there. I never fell in love with the idea of actually completing it and becoming a doctor.

— What type of doctor were you supposed to become?

— A paediatrician.

— Does your medical education help you in what you are doing now in any way?

— I think it is all about the habits and the discipline of studying, learning, and doing research.

Many young chefs come out of culinary school with a romantic idea of instant success, but they underestimate how many years of education and experience it actually takes. Even today, I believe that the day I stop learning in the kitchen is the day I should stop doing this. There is always a better way to improve taste and the overall experience.

— Your great-grandparents had restaurants, your grandparents had restaurants, your father had restaurants. And you started cooking at a very young age, working in the family restaurants. Who actually taught you to cook?

— It was understood that if you were part of the family, you helped in the restaurant. It wasn’t just my parents working — it was my eldest sister, my older brother, me, my aunts, my uncles, my cousins. That was just the family dynamic.

As for cooking, most of my father’s team, great chefs, had been with him from the very beginning. Everyone watched me grow up. In a way, they were like my second set of uncles and aunties and cousins, and they all taught me. Everyone chipped in. I tried to absorb as much as I could from everyone.

Though I was the owner’s son, I didn’t want any special treatment. If the whole team was there at 5 am, I was there at 5 am. If they worked until 2 am, I did too. That work ethic came from my parents, both my mother and my father. They really instilled it in us.

— Do you remember any dish from that time that you cooked and that was amazing?

— I remember a lot of terrible ones, haha!

Every weekend, we made thousands of dumplings, starting at 5 am. I was in college, going out all night, then showing up exhausted and trying to make a thousand dumplings. The chef would pick one up, look at it, and smash it.

It became a constant loop: I need to do better. It was brutal, but eventually I got it.

Later, I moved to the wok station, the soul of the restaurant. Three woks serving hundreds of guests. One day, I looked around and realised I was keeping up with chefs who had been doing this for decades. That is when it clicked: I am actually good at this.

— And at 21, you decided to be independent. Your brothers and sisters stayed with the family, and you decided to move to Toronto.

— I was always kind of the black sheep of the family. I was stubborn, and from a very early age, I knew I wanted to do everything on my own. I believed that whatever I achieved in life had to come from my own two hands. For me, that was a really important principle.

I thought moving to Toronto and working as a chef would work out. I didn’t realise how poorly fine-dining sous chefs are paid. I was working 15–16 hours a day for minimum wage and couldn’t afford rent. So I ended up sleeping in my car. I had nowhere to go.

Eventually, one of my friends had some space in their unfinished basement. It was literally just a basement full of boxes and junk. I cleared a small spot on the concrete floor, put down some cardboard and a couple of blankets, and slept there for a few months while I tried to save money.

I finally saved enough to pick up a second job, then a third. Little by little, I managed to afford a tiny apartment. After that, things started to move forward. I kept getting promotions and raises, and I started making a bit more money. Eventually, I bought an apartment. Later, I sold it and bought a house.

It all happened in baby steps. It took years and years of working like that.

— Do you remember yourself at that time? You were stubborn, obviously, and it doesn’t sound like giving up was ever really an option. But mentally, what was the hardest part for you?

— I think it was seeing a lot of my friends at that time who had chosen different career paths already on their way to huge success.

One thing that really saved me was what I call my guardian angels — and I had a few. One of them is my son’s godparents, Amy and Ken. They always included me in everything.

Whenever I had time — which wasn’t much, because I was working two or three jobs at once — they would still invite me. They knew I would be getting off work at midnight, but wherever they were, they would tell me to come by.

They always made me feel included. They never made me feel out of place. They took care of me in such a genuine way.

— Who were other guardian angels in your life? You mentioned meeting a few.

— One of them was one of my first chefs, Chef Dave Gunawan, back when I was still a sous chef. He invited me to Vancouver to take on a sous chef position at one of the hottest restaurants in the city.

He invited me because the restaurant was incredibly busy and in high demand. I packed up all my things and drove from Toronto to Vancouver to work with them. But within a week, I realised I wasn’t as good as I needed to be. It was incredibly humbling. Every single person in that kitchen, even the most junior cooks, was cooking circles around me.

I was supposed to come in as this strong sous chef and take on the role, and I couldn’t do it. After a week, I told him, “Thank you so much for the opportunity, but I’m not good enough for this.”

That moment completely changed my mindset. I went back to Toronto and threw myself into cooking. That is when my growth really began. I finally understood that if I didn’t study and truly hone my craft, I would never catch up. That mentality has stayed with me ever since.

And then my biggest achievement, my biggest success, my greatest guardian angel, is my wife. She completely changed my life and my perspective.

When I met her, I was a typical young North American chef: heavy smoking, heavy drinking, no exercise. She flipped everything upside down. Now I think about health, strength, and priorities in a completely different way.

Even though she works full-time, she sacrifices so much so I can focus on my career and my life.

— The way you speak about your wife is really beautiful. So, after Canada and after a lot of travelling, you came to Dubai with the decision to open your own place, Jun’s. What was the goal? What did you want to create?

— I wanted the restaurant to reflect who I am in every aspect. I wanted it to be a full Chef Kelvin experience.

I also knew my cooking was ready for its next evolution. I wanted it to stay deeply rooted in the Asian soul and essence, but in a non-traditional way — something you couldn’t find everywhere in Dubai.

That is when we started talking about borderless, third-culture cooking because it is really me on a plate. Growing up, I was always in between: not Chinese enough for the Chinese community, not Canadian enough for the Canadian one. It took time to understand where I belonged.

The same thing happened in kitchens. In my father’s restaurants, I was never quite Chinese enough. In European kitchens, I wasn’t European enough either. So I learned early on that the only way to move forward was to earn my place.

So when you come to Jun’s, everything from the à la carte menu to the tasting menu to the drinks is part of that idea. Every single thing you taste is made from scratch. But more than that, the food takes you on a journey. Every dish is built around what I call a flavour memory or a nostalgic memory.

— That is exactly what I wanted to ask you about. If every dish is built around nostalgic memories, there must be stories behind each one.

— One dish that goes on almost every table is the carrot dish. The thing is, growing up, we were those weird immigrant kids. My mom always packed us leftovers from dinner the night before for lunch. One, because in an Asian household, you don’t waste food. Ever. Two, because it is delicious and nutritious.

But as kids, that meant our lunches smelled. We were always the ones with the “weird,” funky-smelling food, and we got bullied for it. My brother and I would cry and tell our mom that people were making fun of us.

So eventually she said, “Okay, I’ll start making you some Canadian food so you can fit in a bit more.” She began packing us sandwiches. And funny enough, one of our favourites became a smoked salmon and cream cheese bagel.

I wanted to recreate that memory on a plate. So we created our own version of a smoked salmon bagel — but completely vegetarian. We take local heirloom carrots grown for us on a farm near the Abu Dhabi border, char them over olive wood, and pair them with labneh sourced locally in the Middle East.

We hang the labneh for 24 hours, then cold-smoke it with mesquite and hickory. We finish the dish with smoked salt and our own house-made sourdough, which we also char. When you close your eyes and take a bite, there are five different layers of smoke. Even though it is vegetarian, it genuinely feels like you are eating a smoked salmon cream cheese bagel.

Another one of our most popular dishes is our potsticker. It was one of my dad’s signature dishes across all his restaurants — he was known for his pan-seared dumplings. We keep changing it throughout the year, but the spirit stays the same.

The sauce that comes with it is deeply personal. When I was working the wok station full-time in my dad’s kitchen, dinner service was always incredibly busy. Every day, right at five o’clock, my mom would come into the kitchen and ask me for a snack. I would always make her a small cup of hot-and-sour soup. It became a ritual.

Even now, after she has passed, on holidays and special occasions — in our culture — we still make food for those who are gone. We still place a cup of hot and sour soup on her altar.

That dish carries one of my core memories. And that is really what the food at Jun’s is about.

— And what about Crabby Mom?

— My mom is from Singapore, but my dad did most of the cooking at home. On birthdays and special occasions, though, my mom would step into the kitchen to make something special.

One of Singapore’s most iconic dishes is chilli crab. It is difficult and expensive to make, so it was reserved for those moments we really looked forward to — birthdays and big holidays. We always knew that if it was a special day, my mom would be in the kitchen making it.

We recreated that dish on our tasting menu as Crabby Mom, in honour of her cooking for us.

— Jun’s has been in the Michelin Guide in 2023, 2024, and 2025. Was that something you expected from the very beginning?

— We have been very lucky. Since opening in 2023, we have been included every year, and I am still surprised by it. With so many new restaurants and so much focus on marketing and PR, that has never been our approach. We are a homegrown restaurant, supported by our local community. We keep our heads down, cook, and thanks to that support, we have managed to stay where we are and keep achieving these things.

— You have great ratings on Google Maps, but there are always a few negative reviews. Early on, some of them were about the food itself. That can sting, especially right after opening. How did you deal with that? Did you read them?

— I take feedback very seriously. Even if it is a complaint that feels unreasonable or doesn’t make much sense. If someone didn’t enjoy their experience, that matters to me.

Whenever there is feedback, I always do my due diligence. If someone says there was an issue with a dish — let’s say the potstickers — I will check everything. Not just that day, but backwards: who prepped it, where the shrimp came from, where the beef came from, how it was executed. Every single part of the process. I want to make sure it was done the way I expect it to be done.

If everything checks out and the dish was prepared properly, then all I can do is apologise and say, “I’m sorry you didn’t enjoy it. Please come back and try something else.” At that point, it comes down to personal preference — and that is okay.

— Okay, let’s talk about your other project — Jooksing. Why did you decide to open it?

— Jooksing is a tiny Chinese takeaway located in the suburbs. The name itself is important. Jooksing is actually a derogatory term — growing up, it was used to describe Chinese people who were born outside of Hong Kong or mainland China. It basically meant that you weren’t “real” Chinese.

By opening this takeaway, I wanted to reclaim that word and take away its power. I wanted to say, yes, I am Chinese Canadian, and I am proud of that.

The food reflects that idea. It is a fun, unapologetic take on the Chinese-American and Chinese-Canadian dishes I grew up eating and loving.

— And then there is 852 Bakery, inside Jun’s!

— Yes, for now, it is still a pop-up. Guests have been asking for years if they could buy our bread. I am not a baker, but early in my career, I had to learn. That is how our sourdough started. I began working on it when I moved to Dubai almost five years ago.

Because people kept asking, we thought: if we are making bread, why not make sandwiches too? Good sandwiches are surprisingly hard to find here. I also wanted to give people a small taste of what a Chinese or Asian bakery feels like.

So we added a small counter inside Jun’s. On Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, people can come just for baked goods, a sandwich, or a matcha. It is picking up. If interest keeps growing, we will move to seven days — and eventually, I would love to open a standalone bakery.

— Great. So what is the best sandwich to try there?

— Right now, we are doing a special. The idea is to have weekly drops and rotating sandwiches. One of them is something we grew up eating in Chicago — the Italian beef sandwich on a beautiful gluten-free sourdough baguette.

— What is your comfort food, Kelvin? Besides gummies.

— My wife and I are happiest eating street food. Once a week, my son and I get haircuts in Karama for 5 dirhams, then we all eat Ethiopian food together — it has become a ritual. We also eat a lot of South Indian food.

And every now and then, we go to a very no-frills place called Zagol. It is an Indian tandoor restaurant from Kenya with the best kind of comforting food.

At the end of the day, we don’t need much — a bowl of noodles or simple sushi. We love food, but when we go out, it is either very simple or to support friends. I will always choose a friend’s restaurant.