Summer EXP by Sunda at The Hotel Windsor
They say don’t mess with a classic — but this famous Malay snack has been given a summer glow up with a cheesy twist. Here’s where to try it.
Food
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It is the most bonkers dish to come out of a most bonkers year.
There’s a pile of toasted-roasted peanuts mixed with slivers of salty dried anchovies.
Slices of summer-fresh cool cucumber sit by a gooey yolked hard-boiled egg with a fiery sambal alongside, all served on a banana leaf.
But this version of Malaysia’s national dish — nasi lemak — missed the left turn at Albuquerque and ends up in Italy, with the meal’s usual mound of sticky coconut rice substituted with a pouch of burrata, mozzarella’s creamy curd-filled cousin.
Like a layover in Kuala Lumpur after flying in from Puglia, the decadent sweet creaminess of the cheese counters the sambal’s humid heat, an additional macadamia and coconut sambal adding a nutty counter to the traditional condiments.
On paper it doesn’t, shouldn’t work – but this riot of sweet and brow-tingling heat, cool curds and salty, nutty crunch is completely, utterly bewitching. And addictive ($26).
In a year of hospitality defined by myriad, ever-changing rules, in the kitchen it often pays just to break them. And Khanh Nguyen is getting pretty good at this brand of bonkers/brilliant pick-and-mix cooking.
Sunda, his genre-bending CBD restaurant that melds Indo-Malay-Viet dishes with native Australian ingredients — his Vegemite curry roti is one of few plates to truly deserve its “cult dish” status — has proved such a winner two years on that his backers, the Halim family of The Hotel Windsor, are giving him another, Aru Dining, to open in the city mid-year.
But for now, he and head chef Nabil Ansari are reprising their lockdown pivot — the takeaway Sunda EXP which first featured that burrata — in semipermanent summer pop-up form at the Windsor space that last housed chef Rob Kabboord’s excellent paean to his Dutch heritage, Lekker.
Now it’s out with the clogs and in with the cassava crisps and cacio e pepe, which turns up as a dipping sauce for a bloomin’ beautiful blooming onion.
Dusted in curry-spiced flour and fried until dark golden, the onion’s “petals” are at once crunchy, sweet and soft to pull from the bloom and dunk into a peppery, cheesy, thick coconut mayo. Vibrant turmeric pickled cauliflower florets add sharp crunchy cut-through to the onion’s richness. It’s as spectacular to look at as it is to eat. What a dish ($15).
Little wonder it’s going out to every table in the small (though socially distanced) sparsely decorated space that’s full this Sunday lunch with an eclectic mix of diners that tends more to The Windsor end of age spectrum than Sunda, and is all the more charming because of it.
As is switched on service that’s attentive, knowledgeable and calm, the small team spending their summer here before returning to Sunda or going on to Aru.
The fridge is filled with interesting beers, while The Windsor’s cellar offers celebratory champagnes alongside small Aus producers with cool cred (Athletes of Wine; Jamsheed; Brash Higgins) with a few marquee big hitters and offers better drinking than the limited selection by the glass. Four cocktails are offered in either spritz, stirred or no alcohol form, a move both clever and bang-on trend.
The Marco Polo theme continues in such dishes as egg noodles tossed through a spicy nduja XO, toasted rice stepping in for pangrattato, a large mustard leaf adding peppery freshness ($25), while a classic prawn toast is updated for 2021 with a red curry/marie rose sauce that oozes from the ultra-crunchy crustacean crusts ($28).
A whole flounder is expertly cooked, a tamarind and cannellini bean butter sauce adding sharp contrast to its sweet flesh and smoky, char-branded skin ($38), a side of gem lettuce quarters drizzled with a hot-sour vincotto, draped with anchovies and finished with a dusting of grated macadamia is the perfect accompaniment ($14).
It’s not here for a long time, but Summer EXP is certainly offering a deliciously good time and shows an exciting evolution for one of our most exciting young chefs.
SUMMER EXP BY SUNDA
1 Bourke St, Melbourne
Open: Thurs-Sat 5pm-10pm; Sun noon-5pm
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