Chef Khanh Nguyen is on a mission to upturn everything you’ve come to expect of Japanese, Chinese and Korean cuisines. Lushly pink chicken livers, for instance, are barbecued and glazed with Shaoxing wine and laid over kombu butter and Vegemite toast. Dashi-enhanced crumbed fish fingers are snuggled in steamed buns with mustard greens and pops of salmon roe, and numbing Sichuan peppercorns supercharge steak tartare, tumbled through with peanuts and crunchy chickpeas.

A mapo tofu remix punches even harder, featuring egg custard topped with surprise bites of prawn, baby corn, chewy rice cakes and slips of bone marrow. With so much flavour amplified to Spinal Tap levels, celeriac katsu provides a welcome contrast with sweet and nutty ribbons of the root vegetable assembled millefeuille-style and panko-crumbed.

NB: the concrete Scandi-Japanese design does little to dampen the decibels when the restaurant is full, but the crowd is here for it nightly. And hungry.

Must order: Sticky and succulent drunken chicken livers on Vegemite toast.

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