I stumbled across this tiny gem with a big name – Le Salle Dining by Bar Chaplin – while walking up narrow Hutchison Street after dinner at a nearby Surry Hills restaurant. Attracted by the light in the window, I stepped up to the door for a closer look and was greeted by co-owner Ederlyn Oloresisimo (Eddie) who gave me a peek inside and a business card.
A few weeks later I’m at the door again, ringing the buzzer for entry. The décor is subdued with gauze curtains, comfy chairs, and wooden tables topped with sturdy leather placemats and generous serviettes. Like everything else about Le Salle, chef Patrick Dang and his wife Eddie did it themselves. It’s just the two of them delivering a dining experience that’s unlike anything I’ve had in Australia since Tim Pak Poy sold Claude’s. It feels like being at a dinner party in the home of friends who keep a great wine cellar, really know how to cook, and enjoy laid-back jazz.
Patrick’s quiet, focused on his dishes. While Eddie’s chatty, greeting guests and offering glasses of superb wine poured under Coravin. When needed, she’s on hand in the open kitchen too, studiously selecting gai lan flowers to garnish a glass of cauliflower pannacotta topped with scampi, sea urchin and a very generous quenelle of Iranian caviar. But I’m getting ahead of myself. The $98 4-course set menu is a satisfying meal on its own, but there are several extra dishes, including a cheese course, for those who can’t resist a little more. The caviar topped sea urchin is one of them.
Each dish is a little work of art with every element contributing to a beautiful and delicious synergy. On the night I visit, first up is a disc of just-set, seaweed-wrapped ocean trout on a thin disc of avocado in a puddle of cucumber, horseradish and dill sauce with trout belly tartare, cucumber, cucamelon, trout roe, lemon pearls and a crisp wafer of trout skin on top. There’s a lot going on but each element brings something to the dish, nothing is extraneous or gratuitous. And the Sorrenberg sauvignon blanc semillon Eddie suggests with it is a delicious match.
A jumble of cavatelli, peas and a Bolognese-like sauce made from squid sits in a pool of saffron and carrot fumet dotted with tarragon oil. “I don’t generally like ‘fusion’,” Patrick tells me, “unless we’re talking about Cheong Liew.” This dish is inspired by Italian seppie con piselli and I struggle to believe that the “Bolognese” is only squid, no red meat. There’s a surprising hit of heat too from a little house-fermented red chilli. To balance the intensity, a simple curl of lightly-torched tender southern calamari rests on top.
We opt for an extra dish: crisp-skinned, flaky imperador (nannygai) with a cured baby artichoke, a few pipis and swirl of tangy white bean sauce. The fish has been dry-aged for two weeks. It’s followed by half a juicy Jurassic quail filled with chicken farce and foie gras, served with broad beans, tiny morels, pumpkin purée and superb little brioche-like Parker House rolls. We finish the savoury courses with a delicious salty, umami-rich vegetable dish of parmesan-topped puntarelle shoots, rapini and parsley with a refreshing lemon tang.
Dessert is a colourful assembly of chocolate and mandarin with pistachio ice cream, ginger and hazelnut crisps and phlox flowers. Finally Eddie presents the cheese trolley with a small selection of perfectly room-temperature cheeses beneath glass cloches, served with house-made lavoche, honeycomb and rhubarb compote.
Hong Kong-born chef Patrick Dang has cooked his way around the world, from apprentice at MG Garage in Sydney to executive chef at T8 Restaurant in Shanghai, with stops in Boston, Miami, Taipei, Italy and Belgium along the way. While working in Melbourne, he met and married Eddie who also has an impressive fine-dining resume that includes Vue de Monde, Society and Cutler & Co. In November 2023, Eddie and Patrick took over a hole-in-the-wall café tucked into a basement and turned it into an 18-seater restaurant that “opens when we have bookings”, Patrick tells me.
When I ask him about the Charlie Chaplin reference, he says it’s because he often works in silence and because a Chaplin quote has become a mantra for his cooking: “Simplicity is not a simple thing.”
Chaplin also said: “The saddest thing I can imagine is to get used to luxury”, yet I feel I could get used to the little luxury of dining in Patrick and Eddie’s ‘salle’ often. Perhaps you will too.
Visit lesallediningbybarchaplin.com.au for details.
Last visited 27 Jun 2024
