Neutral Bay's Sup Boss is more than 'not bad', it's very good

Imagine arriving for lunch at a restaurant and finding the handful of outdoor-only tables full. Instead of estimating a wait time, your server tells you to hold on and disappears around the corner. In a minute she's back, hefting an extra table and chairs.

That's the can-do reception we received on our arrival at Sup Boss one wintry Saturday. It was an auspicious sign of what would be a very good meal cooked by Aaron Wong, who single-handedly makes all the food from scratch.   

That's remarkable because a year ago, Wong couldn't really cook. When the pandemic began, he lost his job, so he decided to give his dream of opening a restaurant a go. Now he masterfully cooks a concise menu of Malay Chinese hawker food: juicy, lemongrass-heavy Kuala Lumpur Fried Chicken (KLFC), fiery beef rendang, fluffy coconut rice and a chicken laksa whose spiciness builds so you're grateful for a milky teh tarik.

Only the curry puffs, which his grandma made commercially in Kuala Lumpur and Sydney, have a recipe, and he follows that to the letter. "Curry puffs were the first thing I learned to make," he says. "They're like an extension of my grandmother's love. She passed it down to my mother, who passed it down to me. I knew they had to go on the menu."

Other than that, learning to cook the recipe-less dishes involved a lot of guesswork. "In Malay there's a term to describe 'approximately' in cooking. It's 'agaga, whatever la'," he says.

The KLFC took 20 attempts to get right. The chicken is fried to caramel brown in a batter that's a textural, rough, crunchy mix of 15 herbs and spices. Whole curry leaves, also fried, are sprinkled over the top and dipping sauce is replaced with a wedge of lime for a tart finish, plus acar, which are Malaysian pickles whose sweet, sour spiciness make a nice palate cleanser.  

The most efficient way to sample the range of curries is to order the nasi lemak with two sides. Wong's version has all the classic components: peanuts, a boiled egg, sambal, cucumber, acar and ikan bilis, or fried anchovies, plus tender beef rendang and turmeric yellow, gently sweet-and-savoury chicken curry. It all surrounds a tidy mound of delicious rice that appears unassuming but is actually the star. "Nasi lemak translates to fatty rice. I use coconut cream to make the rice more 'lemak'," he says.

Wong's list of people who inspire him include his mum, grandma and Anthony Bourdain. It's fitting then, that char kway teow, reputedly Bourdain's favourite noodle dish, is on the menu: bouncy flat rice noodles, Chinese sausage, fish cakes and egg tossed in dark chilli sauce and smoky wok hei ("breath of wok", created by tilting the wok so the flames lick the food).

A Malaysian restaurant in Sydney wouldn't be complete without laksa. Of the myriad versions he could have made, from fishy, soured broths to creamy, fragrant curry soups, Wong chose his favourite: a thick curry mee style with two types of noodles – hokkein and vermicelli – and toppings of chicken or prawns or both.

There are a lot of ways to measure success. Following your dreams; opening a restaurant in the middle of a pandemic and thriving. For Wong, success is measured by family. "It's really Malaysian to use 'not bad' as an endearment," he says. "When I cooked a dish and got my first 'not bad' from my family, I knew I was onto something."

The low-down

Sup Boss

Main attraction: A comforting, concise repertoire of Malay-Chinese dishes that are as at home in a hawker market as they are in a grandma's kitchen.

Must-try dish: Chicken or vegan mushroom curry puffs. Made from an unchanged, 70-year-old recipe that was sold on the streets of Kuala Lumpur, and then in Sydney, these flaky packets of flavour were the first dish Wong ever learned to make.

Insta-worthy dish: KLFC. Switch your phone to portrait mode to zoom in on the beautifully textural batter on this crunchy, spiced fried chicken. 

Drinks: Velvety teh tarik served hot in winter and teh o limau (iced lemon tea) served cold in summer have seasonal drinks sorted for $5. Otherwise there's a well-balanced pandan jasmine tea Wong created in partnership with Tea Craft.