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A friend recently texted to say he was at a new Italian joint in Bondi and “sail away” was blasting through the speakers. He said, “I’m pretty sure that no matter what style of restaurant you’re running, Enya’s Orinoco Flow should never be on your playlist.” I agreed, noting that only R.E.M’s Everybody Hurts is a worse accompaniment to pasta.

Two weeks ago, I found myself messaging him again, this time to report a new contender had emerged: “We’re eating pappardelle at Hey Chu on Castlereagh Street and there’s a solo guitarist covering You’re Beautiful. We’re the only people here. Now she’s looking straight at us. Send help!”

There are couples, I’m sure, who would love nothing more than a private dining room with live, acoustic James Blunt, but I would rather suck on a guitar string and call it spaghetti.

Mercifully, Hey Chu’s food is bloody delicious. That pappardelle ($36) is house-made and comes tangled with meaty shreds of Vietnamese thit kho – pork braised in coconut milk and cardamom – for fragrant, full-flavoured results.

The casual restaurant opened last month in Hotel Downing, one of those CBD pubs you can walk past a thousand times and never notice. Downstairs, it’s all TAB machines and Keno screens. But one flight up, executive chef Cuong Nguyen has transformed the dining room into a low-lit hideaway that feels like a Hanoi pho shop. There are lanterns, ferns and an open kitchen, and metal stools requiring a BYO cushion if you want to be comfortable.

There’s live music or a DJ every service, and the experience can vary wildly depending on when you visit.

Nguyen also runs Hello Auntie in Marrickville and Haymarket, where he updates classic Vietnamese dishes with on-trend panache. The pitch is similar at Hey Chu, but with more borderless inspiration from head chef Bremmy Setiyoko who cut his teeth at three-hatted Sepia.

Fried oysters ($8 each) doused in a chicken-fat hollandaise, for instance, are the sort of thing you might encounter in a New Orleans dive bar after too many Budweisers.

Setiyoko’s pedigree also brings a little fine-dining flair to the party. Bluefin tuna ($27) is topped with a frizz of crisp-fried enoki and lifted by citrus oil and black pepper. It’s as good as any raw fish you’ll find in fancier restaurants around town.

A chicken congee pot pie ($27) is slightly sweet from koshihikari sushi rice and served with sliced abalone cooked sous vide in roast chicken broth. Pierce a hole in the pastry. Dunk the sliced abalone. Enjoy the beautiful, toe-warming, lemongrass-y mess.

There’s live music or a DJ every service, and the experience can vary wildly depending on when you visit. You’re Beautiful happens on a Tuesday. By Friday, there’s ’90s R&B and guests dancing on stools (the hard seating has one benefit). Three Saturdays ago, a table of 15 staff from other restaurants kicked on until 3am, sharing shallot pancakes and short ribs cooked over charcoal ($88) and assorted cuts of beef dry-aged in-house and coated in a wickedly rich jus.

The ability to book until 1am on weekends (10pm Monday through Thursday) is welcome in a CBD which desperately needs more restaurants to stay open after midnight. (Come back, Golden Century, we miss you.) Later this month, Nguyen will launch a cook-your-own-meat menu with tabletop hibachi grills so there’s always something substantial for walk-in guests, even on nights when the kitchen closes early.

Meanwhile, there are fried chicken wings ($36) coated in a brick-red blend of Sichuan pepper, chilli powder and other pulsing spices; each bite is fiery and crunchy and pretty much perfect.

Thick slices of lamb breast ($42) arrive hissing on a cast-iron plate so they’re nicely charred on the outside and submissive within, sizzling with spring onion and wrinkled shishito peppers. A chilled glass of M&J Becker’s delicate 2022 pinot noir ($18) is your best friend at this point.

Ask about the short, off-menu whisky list if you’re up for a nightcap: Starward Nova single malt ($16), maybe, with a deep-fried apple and jackfruit pie ($16) that tastes just like the heavily blistered McDonald’s treat, but with a scoop of creme fraiche ice-cream.

With advance notice, the kitchen can also organise lobsters and caviar for any groups up for a post-theatre blow-out. Terrific news.

With respect to those chicken wings and congee pie, the more options for late-night dining in Sydney, the better. Nguyen hopes to keep Hey Chu open until 3am daily if there’s enough demand. Keep building it, I say, and people will come (but maybe reconsider the James Blunt).

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine