In November 2024, Australian newspaper The Age’s Good Food Guide 2025 – seen as the equivalent of the Michelin Guide in the country – named a dessert in its Top 20 Snacks list for Melbourne that looked just like a mango pudding you would see on a Hong Kong dim sum trolley, except it was red and white. “Equal parts strawberry jelly and vanilla-spiked milk, the heart-shaped textural delight is constructed with just enough gelatin to hold the whole thing together … this hypnotically jiggly sweet treat is worthy of a dedicated trip,” read the blurb. The strawberry panna cotta is the creation of Hong Kong-born pastry chef Joey Leung Ka-lee, owner-operator of the Melbourne-based artisan dessert shop Joy Jaune, who intended it to be a one-day special for International Women’s Day and to take advantage of end-of-season strawberries. It was picked up by a journalist from Broadsheet, a popular Australian publication, who declared it the best dessert she had eaten all year. Soon, Leung had people coming from over 100km away to try it. Leung’s path to patisserie stardom was not straightforward. Ten years ago, she was working at a Hong Kong advertising firm. But like many young people, she wanted to see the world. “I decided to apply for a working holiday visa for Australia before I got too old to qualify,” she says. Although she remembers “reading blogs and baking from their recipes”, she had not considered patisserie a career until she arrived in Melbourne, a city that prides itself on its vibrant restaurant scene. “In Hong Kong, even though there are restaurants serving all types of cuisines, I mostly ate Chinese and Asian food. It wasn’t until I arrived in Melbourne that I was truly immersed in Western cuisine. “There are so many influences in Australian food because of immigration – Italian, Greek, French – it was fascinating, and I was so inspired.” After a year working in various hospitality positions, she enrolled in a pastry course at Melbourne’s William Angliss Institute, one of Australia’s most renowned culinary schools. Fresh out of her course, she returned to Hong Kong and was hired for the pastry team at Twenty Six by Liberty. “I’m so grateful to [chef] Bjoern Alexander for giving a fresh graduate like me the chance back in the day,” she says. But Melbourne’s relaxed lifestyle had her hooked, and she returned to hone her pastry skills. “I’ve worked in all sorts of [food] establishments – cafes, restaurants, catering, events venues, you name it,” says Leung. Many people and businesses pivoted during the Covid-19 pandemic, and being in Melbourne – which experienced the world’s longest cumulative lockdowns between March 2020 and October 2021 – it was almost inevitable that Leung would too. She had been working at a restaurant in early 2020, when the city shut down. “I was bored, so I began to make small baked goods to sell to my friends. At first, it was just simple things like banana bread, and later as word spread, I decided to add eclairs to the menu. Initially, my friends and I just drove around town and did the deliveries ourselves, and then I also got on UberEats,” she says. Later that year, she was tagged in a Facebook group for Hong Kong immigrants in Melbourne, which propelled her in a new direction. “As the Mid-Autumn Festival was approaching, members in the group started inquiring about where to buy mooncakes, as imports to Asian grocery stores slowed down. Someone tagged me and said, ‘Joey is a pastry chef, maybe she can make some,’ and I thought, ‘Why not?’ I thought I would make 30 or 40 boxes just for fun.” To her surprise, orders flooded in and she found herself having to cure thousands of duck egg yolks. “I made everything from scratch. I went to every market scouring for duck eggs, and separated them all by hand. It was overwhelming, but it was so heartwarming to receive such a great response,” she recalls. In the end, she made over 500 boxes of mooncakes of two types: lotus seed and salted egg, and custard. Melbourne was locked down in the run-up to the Mid-Autumn Festival the following year, so she did it again. Even after life returned to normal and she was working full-time, every year around June, people would start asking her which mooncake flavours she would be making – so she continued to make them. In November 2023, after another successful mooncake season, Leung set up a Joy Jaune pop-up in Preston Market, a produce market in Melbourne, known for its affordability and its Italian, Greek and Vietnamese vendors and shoppers. The location is neither an obvious choice for a Chinese entrepreneur, nor a patisserie selling dainty eclairs and cheesecakes, which was what Leung started out with. “I could have set up in the eastern suburbs [where the Chinese community congregates], but it almost seems too predictable. I’m also a Preston local; I’ve lived here for about eight years now,” she says. “[In Preston], customers would walk up, see my Asian face, and ask, ‘Are you selling dim sum?’ because that’s the only Chinese food they’re familiar with. They don’t expect Western pastries from someone who looks like me.” This inspired her to introduce the market’s clientele to Hong Kong and Asian flavours, while keeping with her classical patisserie techniques. She has made black sesame puddings topped with crushed peanuts and sugar, inspired by black sesame soup from her favourite Hong Kong dessert spot, Kai Kai Dessert, as well as choux pastry swans reminiscent of old-school Hong Kong bakeries, and mango pomelo coconut noodles, a spin on the mango lo hor from the now-shut Hong Kong dessert chain Hui Lau Shan. For Lunar New Year, she made elderflower and osmanthus jellies in the shape of Chinese gold ingots. Leung says that the Joy Jaune pop-up was planned to last two months. “But eighteen months later, I’m still here,” she laughs, adding that it is not easy being a solo entrepreneur. “I mop the floors, I’m the cashier, and I’m the pastry chef. But it also gives me the creative freedom that I think most chefs aspire to.” Being at the Preston Market keeps her in tune with the seasons, which is conducive to creating fruit-based Asian desserts. Leung changes up the menu constantly but, for now, the strawberry panna cotta will stay on the menu – even as strawberry prices have surged in the past year. “It’s tough, but you also don’t want to disappoint people who’ve come out of their way to try your food,” she says. “I really am grateful for all the interest in this little stall.” As Joy Jaune gains recognition, Leung says she hopes to expand – not with more retail outlets, but with events such as workshops, pop-ups and crossovers. “I hosted a mooncake workshop with a non-profit organisation founded by Hongkongers, and I was surprised to see some non-Chinese participants,” she says. “It made me realise what a great way it was to encourage appreciation for our culture.”