‘These are the dishes I’ve wanted to cook for 17 years’: King Clarence chef opens Ashe

It took more than 25 attempts and 17 hours of non-stop baking for King Clarence executive chef Khanh Nguyen to master the “impossible cake” ahead of Bentley Restaurant Group opening its latest CBD restaurant Ashe this week. The dessert is part creme caramel, part sponge cake, and all science experiment: flavours of Vietnamese iced coffee and wattle seed poured in layers that separate and invert during the baking process, similar to Mexican chocoflan. One wrong step, and “the cake sets straight into the custard”, Nguyen said.

It was 2am by the time he got it right, but it was worth it — The impossible cake debuted Thursday, on a menu Nguyen has dreamed of creating since he first stepped into a professional kitchen, nearly 20 years ago. Sydney diners know Nguyen for his signature dish at King Clarence, a $15 fish finger bao with salmon caviar that’s so popular it reportedly rakes in around $500,000 in annual revenue, but his culinary career began at Luke Nguyen’s Red Lantern restaurant in Darlinghurst. Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.

“When I started cooking, my goal was always to open a Vietnamese restaurant, and since then, I’ve travelled to Vietnam about five times,” he said. “During one trip, I spent 30 days eating at 150 different places, and after eating so many dishes I started to wonder how I could push them further with cuisines from neighbouring countries.” It isn’t the first time Nguyen has experimented with South-East Asian cuisine.

Some dishes at Ashe will feel familiar to diners of Sunda and The Age Good Food Guide 2023 Restaurant of the Year Aru, two Melbourne restaurants Khanh co-founded during his six-year stint in Victoria. But at Ashe, Nguyen weaves the Vietnamese and Australian flavours he grew up with in Marrickville and the blueprints he started with in Melbourne into elements of Singaporean, Malaysian and Thai cuisine, ultimately creating a menu that feels more personal than ever before. There’s a pâté en croute that “tastes just like banh mi, minus the bread”, with layers of pâté made from chicken liver and pork mince, cha lua (Vietnamese pork sausage) and grilled pork jowl char siu; pho-spiced beef tendons that are magicked into something resembling a prawn cracker; and sourdough laminated with butter to create “a mix between a roti and a croissant” served with Vegemite curry butter.

Laughing Cow Cheese, a staple of both Australian lunchboxes and Vietnamese cuisine since the colonial era, also gets a look in: smoked and served with kangaroo mortadella and burnt chilli jam on puffs of sesame flatbread “I was told that you have to cook food that’s true to you. That’s your identity, that’s what makes it unique,” Nguyen said. “I’m Vietnamese-Australian, and these are the dishes I’ve been wanting to cook for the past 17 years.”

Ashe is the second restaurant Nguyen has developed with Bentley Restaurant Group, following the successful launch of two-hatted restaurant King Clarence in 2023. It kicked off a season of change for the hospitality group, said chef Brent Savage, who opened the first iteration of Bentley Restaurant and Bar with co-founder Nick Hildebrandt in 2006. “We’ve had more movement over the past four years than we did in the first 15 years,” Savage said, referencing the opening of restaurants Eleven Barrack and Watermans alongside the closure of Monopole and Cirrus.

“What I’ve really enjoyed is the collaborations with amazing chefs like Khanh and Darryl Martin, the head chef down at Watermans ... there have been moment when I’ve been looking after five menus by myself, and it was really, really intense. “The way we’re doing it now feels a lot more sustainable.”

At Ashe, the 80-seat dining room “is a little bit darker and moodier, and the food just a little bit more refined, without being too fine-dining,” said Hildebrandt. Before the end of July, it will be joined by the group’s first bar, Vespertine. Ashe opens daily for dinner and Monday to Friday for lunch4 Ash Street, Sydney, bentleyrestaurantgroup.

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