Ashe

The Verdict

Bentley Restaurant Group's Nick Hildebrandt and Brent Savage are behind some of Sydney's most enduring dining rooms, and their latest, Ashe, has just landed on the corner of Angel Place and Ash Street with executive chef Khanh Nguyen at the helm.

This is Nguyen's most personal menu to date, a clay oven and grill doing the heavy lifting across dishes drawing on Vietnam, Thailand and Malaysia, worked through with native Australian ingredients he's spent years cooking with. The room seats 80, with a 30-seat private dining room tucked off the main space.

Snacks set the tone early: pho-spiced beef tendon, lemon-cured wagyu with chilli pickled onion. From there, expect crisp rice salad layered with smoked kangaroo jerky and shrimp sambal, chilled spanner crab Har Mok with finger lime and puffed sesame rice paper, and a sour orange curry built around chargrilled cuttlefish and Yamba pippies. 

Ashe is open for lunch and dinner seven days a week and is well worth a visit for those looking to explore a menu anchored by contemporary Southeast Asian flavours with a distinctly Australian edge.

Image Credit: Supplied