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“You guys look amazing tonight,” says the waiter at Takam in Darlinghurst. Actually, I can return the compliment. I’ve walked past this Victoria Street site for years, since it was a pizza joint called Danny’s La Bussola, and it’s never looked this good.

Takam began here as a tiny Filipino diner, taking it one step at a time, before chefs and co-owners Aileen Aguirre and Francis Dela Cruz closed to do a complete renovation. Now there’s a dominant marble bar, marble-topped tables, bentwood chairs and a small mezzanine dining room above.

The menu is built on their belief that Filipino food, long ignored by mainstream diners, is ready for its time in the sun. In Melbourne, the vinegary, smoky, spicy cuisine is already in the spotlight, particularly at Serai (have the charred cabbage tocino) and Askal (have the pork belly humba with black beans).

To close the gap, the Takam team has taken on partners Ralph Libo-on and Michael Mabuti of Askal, and opened with a strong cocktail program and a short but considered natural wine list.

Aguirre and Dela Cruz left the Philippines in 2016 to chef on Orpheus Island, before moving to work in Sydney, most recently at Crown Towers. They are both hands-on cooks – smoking their own mackerel (in paperbark), preserving their own calamansi – and thoughtful custodians of Filipino cuisine.

The menu is built on their belief that Filipino food is ready for its time in the sun.

The thoughtfulness extends to reflecting their Australian home by incorporating native ingredients. There’s bush tomato in the banana ketchup with the “lumpia de Shanghai” ($11), for instance, the crisp little spring rolls neatly furled in perilla leaf. Hit up a hoppy, fresh, San Miguel Pale Pilsen ($13) with them, or a pretty Gumamela cocktail built on banana vodka, hibiscus and barrel-aged bitters ($24).

A few dishes really resonate. The soy and lime toyomansi glaze of Humpty Doo barramundi fish collars ($24 for two) gleams like a just-waxed car even as your teeth sink into the soft, giving, flesh.

Poqui poqui ($24) is a great little dish of omurice-style scrambled egg draped over soft, smoky eggplant.

Bacalao “cavite” ($19) is an elegant pool of whipped cod’s roe topped with fruity salt cod and peppers, with small puffy rounds of warm bread on the side.

King prawn pancit palabok ($39) combines two great Filipino loves – charcoal-grilled prawns and rice vermicelli – tossed with a mild, smoky, bisque-like sauce hit with crab fat (roe) and calamansi.

Ralph Libo-on has chosen wines to play with the richness of the food – a fruity, frisky Carousal chenin blanc ($18/$89) from South Australia’s Riverland is a case in point.

There’s slow-cooked beef brisket with pepperberry sarsa (sauce) and Qukes ($53) to share, but with no lechon (roast pork) on the menu as yet, it’s all about the chicken inasal ($42). The firm, meaty chicken thighs are marinated with calamansi, ginger, garlic, lemongrass and spiced coconut vinegar and finished over coals.

A much-loved staple of the manukan chicken houses of Bacolod on the island of Negros, it’s extremely satisfying, and great to eat in your hands.

(Tip: the chicken inasal is also pretty good down the road at the Kings Cross branch of Parramatta’s Smoky Cravings, where you can add on skewers of coal-grilled pig’s intestines.)

If you like swirling hits of vinegar, calamansi, rich crab fat (roe), smoky pork and soy-glazed barbecued chicken, you’ll be nodding happily through your meal here.

Just don’t look for a creme caramel wobble in the leche flan, spiked with Murray River salt and lemon myrtle ($11); this version is richer and firmer than the French.

Floor staff (almost too many one evening, and not quite enough the next) are helpful, fun, part of the family, and – did I say? – make their diners feel as good as they look.

Takam may have the charm of a small family-run Filipino restaurant, but there’s nothing small about its potential to reach, inspire and convert diners to the Filipino food movement.