The ranks of South Yarra’s buzzy contemporary Asian restaurants will soon swell, as Sydney’s smoke-driven Yan plants the flag in the suburb this May. It replaces contemporary Turkish restaurant Yagiz following the departure of founding chef Murat Ovaz late last year.

Yagiz’s owners, The Sterling Group, tapped a pal in Sydney, Narada Kudinar, who co-founded Yan in the city’s southern suburbs in 2017. The restaurant has held a Good Food Guide chef’s hat since 2019 for its melding of smoke and charcoal with Chinese and Japanese dishes.

“The most common feedback we get on our food is that it’s not like anything [people have] had before, except it also feels familiar,” says Kudinar, who will be co-owner in the Melbourne venture.

Key dishes include lightly smoked prawns served chilled with ginger sauce, lamb ribs with coriander-based “chimichurri” spiked with soy sauce and black vinegar, and a liquid nitrogen ice-cream dessert, served in the shell of a coconut.

Most, if not all, of the Sydney menu will be brought to Melbourne by executive chef Ewa Goralewski, who has been promoted from head chef at Yan.

Yan’s contemporary take on Asian cooking, coupled with a format geared to group dining, will find a ready audience in South Yarra, where Yugen opened last year, joining more casual variations on the genre such as Tokyo Tina.

Kudinar says the larger kitchen at Yagiz plus Goralewski’s new role will provide time and space to develop new dishes for the restaurant, and work in some local Melbourne influences.

Yan opens in early May, with Yagiz serving its last diners on April 6 before undergoing a light makeover, including new artwork in the dining room.

22 Toorak Road, South Yarra, yanrestaurant.com.au