Flavour of the month: Melbourne’s St Cloud Eating House

A refugee family makes a desperate journey to Australia on two boats. Thirty years later, this dish becomes a classic.

Vung Tau chicken at Saint Cloud eating house, Hawthorn east, Melbourne. Photo supplied

The first in a series of stories that delve into unforgettable dishes. Today: Vung Tau grilled organic chicken with watercress, herbs, chilli, lemon and mustard sriracha, from St Cloud Eating House, Hawthorn East, Victoria.

Backstory: Vung Tau, a province in southern Vietnam, is home to chef Franky Pham’s forebears. The dish was a family favourite when Pham, 30, was growing up in Australia. “My four brothers and I would rush home from school when we knew Mum was cooking it,” he says. The traditional marinade involves hoi sin, chilli, garlic, honey and sesame oil. His mother would butterfly the chicken, drop it in the marinade and cook it on the barbecue.

Produce: When the restaurant launched in December, Pham was sourcing ­organic chickens from Victorian producer Milawa; supply issues have since forced him to look further afield. Bannockburn free-range (but not organic) birds are being used as an interim solution, says Pham, who adds that the restaurant remains committed to sourcing organic chicken.

Method: At St Cloud, Pham marinates the chicken for 24 hours, steams it, then finishes it on the grill to get that wonderful charry flavour.

The twist: Pham tweaks the marinade recipe, adding fermented tofu and cutting down on the chilli. Instead, he adds heat at the end in the form of the famous Thai chilli sauce sriracha, offered as a condiment — spiked with lemon and mustard — alongside. On the menu, the chicken is tagged a “St Cloud classic”, your guarantee it will be there next month as well … and the month after that …

The look: The chopped-up bird is dusted with sesame seeds, scattered with fresh mint, watercress and strands of chilli and served on an earthenware platter.

The dish is best shared between two or three people.

Price: $40. This might sound steep for a chicken dish, until you see the size of the serving — it’s best shared ­between at least three, or two very hungry people. It would be criminal to waste any — and it’s a bit hard to stash leftover chook pieces in your handbag. And also ... Pham’s journey to Australia was a fateful one. His family left Vietnam on two refugee boats bound for Malaysia — half the family in the first boat, the other in the second, in case one of the boats didn’t make it — while his mother was pregnant with Franky. The trip was interrupted when Franky’s ­impending, premature arrival forced a stopover in Kuala Lumpur for the birth. “And my parents thought Australia meant Austria, so they’d packed all the wrong clothes,” says Pham.

Other great roast (or ‘grilled’) chickens: Roast chicken, burnt corn, charred onions, spanner crab and chive butter at The Bellevue Hotel, Paddington, Sydney; Ballotine of Sommerlad chicken (from nearby Milking Yard farm) with black barley, jus gras and salsa verde, Lake House, Daylesford, Victoria.