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There is something slightly surreal about sitting at a bright green booth table listening to Barry Manilow sing Copacabana while crunching chunky daikon kimchi and drinking New Zealand sauvignon blanc. But that’s dining in Australia right now.

Korean cuisine has been slowly fermenting in dark corners of Sydney for years, and now it’s well and truly here, courtesy of a new generation of chefs twisting the tradition of their family’s food for a new age.

This movement even has a name: third-culture cuisine. If the first culture is one’s heritage, and the second is one’s country, then the third is a product, and celebration, of both.

Funda is the latest evocation, and one of the most ambitious. It’s also one of the loudest, not just with disco music and live DJs but with its electric decor, flashes of neon and tunnelled entrance that’s like being trapped in an MTV video.

Owners Jangho So and Sunyoung Kim run the popular, casual Firestone cafes, but this is a step up. There are more surprises in the kitchen, in the form of executive chef Jung-su Chang, who held two Michelin stars at chef Yim Jung-sik’s Jungsik Seoul, and head chef Chris Kim, who has cooked at Tetsuya’s and Melbourne’s Supernormal. They’re pooling their considerable talents to reshape traditional Korean favourites into funkier versions of themselves.

That means fried seaweed rolls ($12 each) of prawn and scallop mousse, wrapped in perilla leaf and seaweed, fried in a light tempura batter, and served with soy mayo for dipping. It’s everything a spring roll wants to be, with added charm.

Kimchi – refined, clean, sharp – is a natural pairing with an elegant hweh (sashimi) of precisely sliced, buttery kingfish ($28), and there’s more kimchi available as sides (do it). White kimchi of wombok ($8) sings with brightness, and crunchy chunks of daikon kimchi ($8) are strewn with sesame seeds and basil.

Then things get street-foody with little chicken sausages skewered with chewy tteokbokki rice cakes ($9 each) and striped with fruity gochujang sauce and avocado – a hoot. Funda ramyun ($22) is a bowlful of brothy potato noodles with crumbled beef bulgogi and a fried egg, and jjigae ($28) is a soupy, spicy beef stew with soft tofu, pyogo (shiitake mushroom) and kimchi in concentrated chicken broth – central heating in a bowl.

Nicely sticky lamb riblets sing with a fruity sweet and sour sauce ($39), calling out for the fat-cutting ability of a juicy, bright Mulline pinot noir nouveau ($80) from Victoria’s Bellarine Peninsula. Another surprise – gamjajeon, a roesti-like pancake of shredded, crisp-fried potato ($20), is topped with sweet bulgogi and a shower of parmesan. Every bite is a wow of crunch and squish.

The menu is a mix of summery and wintry, both smartened up and streetwise, and it’s left up to you as to how to play it. GM World Jeong’s team on the floor and behind the bar are super-keen and happy to upsell on side dishes and drinks.

Desserts are picture-book, from yuzu and perilla leaf granita, to jujube cake with butterscotch caramel and jujube mousse. A pavlova ($20) is an angelic orb of pale yeast meringue with milky makgeolli ice-cream, injeolmi (soybean rice cake) and limoncello in a smash-and-grab of cream and crunch.

Lunches at Funda are less frantic and loud, but still bring music and high energy, with a $69 set menu that’s a natural for office groups.

If you’re after a quiet romantic tryst, this is not the place (for that, there will be chef Jung-su Chang’s Allta, a 12-seat, gilt-edged, marbled fine-diner next door, opening late this year).

But it’s good to see some fun in this part of town. The high noise levels aren’t there to mask anything; they’re more of a generational expression, to help diners relax. The main thing is that the craft is there, so that the flavours, ideas and intentions come through loud and clear.