Rice-based black pizzas coming to Surry Hills

Want to know what you'll be eating in 2018, Sydney? Well, if Melbourne has any say in it, our edibles will be back in black.

Sash restaurant has been warming up its act in the Victorian capital in recent months, the start-up turning out rice-based Japanese pizza bases blackened with squid ink. Now it is Sydney's turn, with Sash nabbing a site on Wentworth Avenue, Surry Hills, down the hill from another Victorian food import, Chin Chin.

Co-owner David Nelson says the Surry Hills restaurant will open in late February, with a space crafted by busy design shop Melissa Collison Design (Rosetta Sydney).

Nelson says the concept grew out of an entrant for an international pizza competition that took the idea of sushi and sashimi and turned it into a pizza. Not surprisingly, chef Ken Tut (ex Ichi Ni) tops pizzas with salmon, avocado and wasabi mayo, or chilli spanner crab with lemon and blood orange.

Nelson says they'll also serve a line of gyoza-skin-shell tacos, and, while the black pizza bases are novel, chef Sean Connolly had Sydney eating Black widow burgers back in 2014.

Nelson is aiming high with Sash. "There'll be a second one in Sydney, then LA in 2019," he says.