Previous SlideNext Slide

We know that change is a constant, but we struggle with it, too, not least when it comes to restaurants ditching favourite dishes. The roti with Vegemite curry at Sunda was an intriguing snack that drew people to the laneway restaurant. The playful bread and dip was a delicious adventure that also expressed the restaurant’s MO: border-busting Asian-Australian food. If you’ve never swiped flaky flatbread through red-curry-spiked umami splodge, well … sorry … you’ve missed out.

There are good reasons for that. Sunda isn’t the restaurant it was when it opened in 2018 with chef Khanh Nguyen at the helm, scaffolding for decor and communal tables to amp up the “I’ll have what she’s having” vibe. At the time, there was a young, Indian-born chef in the kitchen. Nabil Ansari worked his way up the ranks to second in charge before decamping to Prahran’s Firebird for most of 2022.

Now he’s back – and this time as head chef, since the talented Nguyen moved to Sydney to helm new restaurant King Clarence.

The two-level interior has been revamped, too: the shared tables are gone and there’s an eight-seat bar. The scaffolding remains, though: my companion wondered if the restaurant was still mid-reno.

Sunda is an important restaurant for Melbourne as it embraces our Asian-ness while celebrating local produce.

When Ansari was an underling at Sunda, there were eight chefs and overtime was normal. One worker’s sole job was rolling, frying and fluffing the time-consuming rotis. Things are different now. Wages are higher, food costs are up, and we all know about power bills.

The boffins who run the hospitality group that includes Sunda – and also Aru, Parcs and Antara 128 – presented some numbers. To hit his targets, Ansari worked out he could employ five chefs. He knew he wanted his team to work no more than 42 hours a week because, like many hospitality professionals, the forced pauses of recent years had taught him about career longevity and mental wellbeing.

You wouldn’t necessarily notice it while you’re at Sunda having a fun, super-tasty dinner in a chatty, convivial dining room, but Ansari’s refashioned menu is built on these principles. It comprises a smallish list of 17 a la carte items to share, all of which can be prepped ahead and cooked swiftly in the moment.

So bye-bye roti and happy hello to all of this. The biggest and best tiger prawns ($32) are bathed in a kind of jungle curry elixir: aromatic lemongrass, ginger, shallots and galangal are sizzled in brown butter instead of the usual vegetable oil. Order the prawns with idli ($10) – steamed rice and lentil cakes – which are perfect for mopping up and also happen to be one of many Indian touches Ansari has introduced.

Plump mussels ($22) are served over almost-crunchy, spiralised potato that’s been stir-fried in chicken fat. It’s a well-judged assembly of exciting Chinese-ish ideas.

Every restaurant has to think about allergies and eating habits. The smart ones cover vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free and nut-free in the same “free from” dish. One third of Sunda’s menu is like this, but omnivores would be mad to leave these items to the diet-restricted.

Bak kut teh ($40) is a Malaysian medicinal soup, usually made with a slow-cooked pork bone base. Sunda offers a mushroom version, infused with healing herbal necessaries such as ginseng and red date. It’s punchy and polarising. The very idea of soup in summer will challenge some, but here I found it head-whackingly bright and with spellbinding depth.

Rojak is a fruit and vegetable salad popular in Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore. Ansari’s version ($24) includes papaya, pineapple and star fruit, plus sorrel and broad-bean leaves. A rubble of macadamia anchors the dish in Australia.

Soybeans grown in NSW are turned into milk, then set with gypsum to make a mild tofu pudding that showcases the primary ingredient. Topped with Oolong tea syrup and white strawberries, it’s a pianissimo dessert.

If you want rock ‘n’ roll, get the parfait ($22), a riff on apam balik, a peanut pancake adored on the streets of Indonesia and Malaysia.

The food is well-priced, which can work two ways: if you’re restrained, you can eat some of Melbourne’s coolest food at a steal. But it’s also easy to keep adding $20 here and $40 there and get spendy.

Sunda is an important restaurant for Melbourne as it embraces our Asian-ness while celebrating local produce. I like this new iteration. It doesn’t feel as game-changing, but does feel perfectly judged for now, both for diners and the people who look after us in restaurants.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine