DJs, fish finger buns, Vegemite toast: This new spot is not your typical two-hat restaurant

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The first thing you notice about King Clarence, a new Asian-inspired restaurant in the CBD, is that it looks like a Scandinavian ramen bar where the builders walked off the site the day before. There’s blond wood and pink neon and drops of paint on the polished concrete floor. There are timber frames that look as if they’re waiting to be Gyprocked.

The second thing you notice about King Clarence is that Khanh Nguyen can really, really cook.

Take the fish finger swaddled in a steamed bao with American cheese and tartare ($14). It’s a straight-up tribute to McDonald’s’ Filet-O-Fish. In other hands it might be insipid Instagram bait – Birds Eye on a soft, white bun – but the sauce flickers with pickled chilli and mustard greens, and salmon roe pops against the cream and crunch. Barramundi is set in gelatinised dashi stock – xiao long bao soup dumpling-style – and crumbed with a tattooist’s precision so it explodes in your mouth and not the deep fryer. You’ll immediately want another.

Nguyen grew up in Marrickville but made a name cooking in Melbourne, filtering South-East Asian cuisines through his Australian upbringing (roti with Vegemite curry, say). In July, he announced he was leaving finer diner Aru (a former Restaurant of the Year in The Age Good Food Guide, no less) and would be spending more time with his family in Sydney.

The sizeable menu’s biggest influences come from China, Korea and Japan, and Vegemite makes a cameo.

When restaurateurs Brent Savage and Nick Hildebrandt needed an executive chef for their new restaurant, Nguyen was number one on the list. Savage and Hildebrandt’s smart cooking and singular booze list have been setting Sydney dining trends for the past two decades, with Bentley, Cirrus, Monopole, Yellow and Brasserie 1930. There may be mid-tempo electronic music at the new digs, not to mention the occasional DJ and disco ball, but King Clarence is every bit the sharp operation we’ve come to expect from the team.

The martinis are stiff, the service excellent. Sheets of oatmeal-toned linen sway above tables, looking like Japanese room dividers. Limited booth seating is available if you want to get cosy with half a tank-fresh, grilled rock lobster ($128), rich with pecorino and corn and humming with four colours of Kampot pepper.

Or you could request a lunch spot at the bar and try the mighty flavoured mapo tofu remix ($38), teeming with nubs of royal red prawn, smoked marrow and chewy tteokbokki rice cakes. Sommelier Polly Mackarel’s wine list can rise to any occasion, whether it calls for a 2022 Kris Pinot Grigio from Italy ($14 a glass) or a 1982 Mouton Rothschild ($6250 a bottle).

The sizeable menu’s biggest influences come from China, Korea and Japan, and Vegemite makes a cameo on toast with kombu butter and grilled chicken livers (two for $19). It’s an intensely savoury snack, glazed with soy sauce, sansho pepper and white balsamic.

Meanwhile, six pork and prawn dumplings pulse in a fragrant “14 spice” oil ($24), while rose-pink slices of cured and torched bonito are dressed with smoked tamari and paperbark oil ($25). It is a very, very nice fish.

I could keep banging on about the smaller plates like this – don’t miss the slippery, bitey, cold buckwheat noodles ($22) buzzing with native pepper in spring onion oil, either – but I also need to mention the duck ($80).

A half-bird, tremendously juicy, that’s been brined, blanched, maltose-dipped, dry-aged, dipped again, aged some more, roasted, smoked and glazed, roughly in that order. The leg is sticky with hoisin and Davidson’s plum, and a sauce of duck bones and pickled umeboshi plums puts the flavour into overdrive. Pair it with a refreshing cloud fungus (it’s like wood-ear mushroom) and cucumber salad for $18.

But if you order only one headline act, make it the wood-roasted pork belly ($70). All luscious fat and crackling you can bounce a coin off, the pork is served Korean ssam-style with glistening leaves for wrapping, kimchi, oyster cream and a riveting fermented chilli sauce with a little kick of wasabi. Take any leftovers home for one hell of a banh mi the next day.

Before Nguyen came on board, there was a bit of social-media hullabaloo about another two white blokes opening an Asian restaurant. It’s a fair point and opinions vary wildly.

I put any case of cultural appropriation on a scale of Beastie Boys to Vanilla Ice. One is three Jewish guys who approached hip-hop with humility and respect; the other is a white rapper summoned for corporate greed. The only Ice Ice Baby vibes you’ll experience at King Clarence is if the DJ goes off script.

This review was originally published in Good Weekend magazine