Anchovy, Melbourne: restaurant review

Anchovy, a ‘Mod Asian’ little diner in Richmond, is modest in amenity but overdelivers on food. Four out of five stars.

TWAM-20160206 EMBARGO FOR TWAM 6 Feb 2016 NO REUSE WITHOUT PERMISSION Anchovy restaurant Melbourne Pic Jesse Marlow

The 48 tram rumbles along Bridge Road destined for the private school-belt beyond; it might as easily be a bus on Oxford Street, Paddington.

The street’s alive with people, dogs, bikes, pizza guys, chicks on skateboards, the early nights of summer ripe with optimism. Our vantage point? The window of a small restaurant, quite literally seeing the world through rose-coloured glasses (chilled Luke Lambert Crudo). Life’s good.

Anchovy is a more-dash-than-cash little diner on this ever-changing Richmond strip, all stools and high tables, but there’s a common thread with other, quite individual eating houses around the country: places like Victor Liong’s Lee Ho Fook in Melbourne, or Eun Hee Ann’s Moon Park in Redfern. Young, Asian-Australian chefs with excellent European restaurant pedigrees doing their own food with a palate reflecting ethnicity but a menu that reflects imagination.

For Vietnam-born chef Thi Le, one half of the partnership behind Anchovy, it means food that is, in her own words, “Modern Asian. Modern Australian. A little bit in between.” And what would you expect of a girl who came with refugee parents at two, worked in “dodgy Asian restaurants” as a teen, dropped out of interior design and got a job, eventually, with Sydney’s Chris Manfield at Universal? Down south, she toiled in influential places: Cumulus Inc, Supernormal, Town Mouse and Luxembourg.

Who doesn’t want the best for a young chef doing his/her own thing, provided there’s talent? Ms Le has buckets. Her food is light, vibrant and refreshing, reminiscent of South-East Asian authenticity yet at the same time new, with a subtle hybridisation of techniques, ingredients and flavours; velvet-glove punch yet rare balance and refinement to dressings and sauces.

Taking a lesson from her former master Andrew McConnell, Le has a thing, that one small, guilty pleasure on the menu people can’t shut up about. Enter the Vietnamese blood pudding, a rich and gently Asian-spiced version of boudin noir served with Vietnamese mint and coriander in a cosberg shell (a cos/iceberg hybrid) with a fruity/tangy ginger dressing and a scattering of spiced, ground rice. Completely delicious.

Short, stubby, springy rice “drop noodles” are wokked with turmeric/chilli sauce and different eggplants, scattered with pea tendrils and sweet fried shallot. You squeeze lemon and, wow, flavours straight from the cooker just leap like a Ferrari. An altogether more Thai character makes a cuttlefish and fresh herb salad, with young lotus stems and plenty of chilli/lemon/Thai basil and shallot, another sensation. Same same, but different.

The list of bigger dishes is short. Whole flounder gets pan-fried and smothered with a “curry vinaigrette” and a duvet of feathery, verdant dill peppered with fried baby curry leaves. That dressing/sauce is rich with oil, yellow with fresh turmeric and some serious flavour-building components – yet the “freshness” of acid. The result is a perfectly cooked, familiar fish seen in an altogether new light. Superb.

While “jungle spice” chicken – a baby bird marinated in a complex, coarse paste with oodles of lemongrass, and then expertly chargrilled – is quite Balinese. It comes with sticky rice and two dressings: one of chilli and tamarind, the other Cambodian pepper and lemon. Again, there’s precision in that protein.

Put chargrilled sticks of zucchini on a mayo-like emulsion of fermented tofu and olive, scatter them with chopped fresh dill and shaved mojama, and you have my Vegetable Dish of the Year.

Two staff front this operation; it means service is disciplined but cool. Never mind, we can talk about the wondrous combo of feather-light orange financier (almond/brown butter cake), orange caramel, aerated dark chocolate and yoghurt.

Anchovy is modest on amenity but completely overdelivers on food. The rose-coloured glasses are working just fine.

Address: 338 Bridge Road, Richmond, Vic

Phone: [phone] Web: anchovy.net.au

Hours: Lunch Fri; dinner Tue-Sat

Typical prices: Starters $18; mains $34; desserts $13

Summary: Salty, but very sweet

Like this, try… Moon Park, Sydney; Lee Ho Fook, Melbourne

Stars: 4 out of 5