Restaurant Ka brings modern Australian flavours to a pint-sized Darlinghurst space

While Sydney's rash of new pint-sized restaurants are mostly Asian, the latest entrant in its weight class touts itself as contemporary Australian with a degustation rather than omakase menu.

Restaurant Ka's owner-chef, Zac Ng, might just have the chops to pull off this culinary high-wire act.

Ng, who worked at Flying Fish and spent nearly 10 years at the award-winning Sepia before heading to XOPP as head chef, has already pricked the ears of a curious culinary crowd on a loveless strip in Darlinghurst.

Legendary Sydney chef Janni Kyritsis and grape guru Jon Osbeiston​ were among those spotted there in its opening weeks.

"Ka means home, family," the Hong Kong-raised chef explains. "At home, you have no rules about what [food] you serve. It's the same with Restaurant Ka." While he describes the eight-course menu as contemporary Australian, there's a bit of Cantonese and Japanese here and there.

An example is a play on snapper with ginger and shallots [spring onions].

Ng transplants flash-grilled fish into the dish (he's tried snapper, mackerel, bonito and trevally), serving it "warm but still rare" with a white soy sauce made with dashi, ginger, spring onions and coriander.

The revolving menu might sweep Bangalow sweet pork tortellini one night, calamari with burnt spring onions the next. "I slice the calamari length-wise. It's like a noodle and the flavour is a bit like salt-and-pepper squid," he says.

With just 10 seats at its counter, Restaurant Ka is typical of the pint-sized restaurants sweeping Sydney. Chefs will serve food straight to customers, a business model that side-steps the staffing supply issues restaurants currently face.

Hopefully most of the bang for the buck ends up on the plate, and while Restaurant Ka is a sizeable investment at $180 a head for food, many Sydney omakase venues charge north of that.

Restaurant Ka's chef-owner feels he was destined to end up in the kitchen.

"I worked in hotels in Hong Kong," he says. "My parents didn't want me to cook and I came to Australia to go to university, but always worked in restaurants [on the side] before I moved to it full-time."

Open Tue-Sat dinner.

13B Burton Street, Darlinghurst, restaurant-ka.com.au