Eat like they do in Europe at this globe-hopping chef’s new ‘tucked away’ dining spot

With a career that has taken him around the world, chef Patrick Dang has cherry-picked his favourite elements from those travels and distilled them into one tiny venue.

Le Salle Dining by Bar Chaplin, which opened in Surry Hills last week, is turning out the sort of technical, Insta-worthy dishes you might expect from a full brigade. And Dang is doing it solo.

“It’s just me in the kitchen and one on the floor. I just have to work harder,” he says.

Dang’s CV jumps from Boston and Taiwan (where he was cooking French-Japanese), to Melbourne, where he opened a wine room.

“I really like the small, intimate spaces you find in Japan,” he says surveying his own small, 25-seat venue. “I designed it myself. There was nothing really to design. We painted it and put up some curtains,” he says. La Salle translates as “the room” in French.

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The chef’s globe hopping was always interlaced with spells in Sydney (La Grillade, Concrete Blonde), so he wanted to return and bring some of the craftsmanship he first witnessed in the city at restaurants such as MG Garage. That detail is evident in the Spanish mackerel dish where the fish is cured in kombu and matched with a house-pickled daikon, cucumber juice and elderflower.

“I’ve designed it so dishes are in flavour progression,” Dang says. It includes a veal tartare topped with a truffled yolk, red emperor with a prawn chorizo, and cuttlefish served with saffron cavatelli.

It’s pretty food, designed to be eaten in four or five mouthfuls. Dishes generally hover in the mid- to high $20s.

Dang has tailored a tight drinks program, with two or three cocktails, a couple of beers and a wine list as well travelled as the chef, while still offering about a quarter dedicated to local bottles. He also lists some Croatian wine, which Dang believes doesn’t receive the recognition it deserves.

“We’re somewhere between a wine bar and a restaurant, we don’t have a coffee machine. We’re tucked away, like the good places in Europe and Melbourne,” Dang says.

Open lunch Sat-Sun; dinner Wed-Sun.

Shop 1, 18 Hutchinson Street, Surry Hills, instagram/lesallediningbybarchaplin