First Look: Luke Nguyen’s Charcoal Hearth Is Luring in a Fresh Crowd to the Fish Market

Flambadou. Flom-be-doo.

Beyond being fun to say – and entertaining to watch – it’s a key component in many of Luke Nguyen’s dishes at Lua, the 290-seater opening at the new Sydney Fish Market.

“It’s an ancient, almost medieval, French cooking technique,” says Nguyen. “You put this cast-iron cone in the firepit until it’s a really bright, scorching red. Then we put some Wagyu beef tallow in there and pour it over the lobsters or clams, or whatever we’re cooking. When someone orders a flambadou, I invite guests to come to the hearth, see what we do, and feel the warmth of that firepit.”

Lua’s open kitchen is anchored by the open charcoal hearth. The smoke and exposed grill remind Nguyen of Vietnamese street food – and the way he shops for Lua’s menu each day reminds him of his parents.

“When I walk to work, I go past all the fishmongers. I go past Claudio’s, Get Fish and  Nicholas’s. It’s almost like going to the wet market in Asia. I talk to the vendors and say ‘I want five kilos of that or 10 kilos of this’. In Vietnam, my parents went to the markets twice a day. That’s market life in Southeast Asia, and so I’m reliving that now.”

The menu is full of odes to family – and we’ll start at the end. The dessert menu features “corn three ways” and was inspired by Nguyen’s auntie, who is a wholesale corn dealer. There’s also Vietnamese salted coconut coffee tiramisu served tableside, nodding to the Italian pastry chefs on the team.

The live mud crab in tamarind-chilli sauce is made to a family recipe passed down to head chef Barry Ngo (ex-Chin Chin) by his late mother. The crabs are sourced from the markets and then drenched in a sauce that’s sticky, sweet, salty and tart in equal measure.

Nguyen recommends ordering the Vietnamese take on Cambodian amok, a steamed Khmer curry. Typically, it’s made with snakehead, a flatwater river fish that’s common in the Mekong, but at Lua it’s made with whole snapper. The fish is marinated in galangal, garlic and lemongrass, wrapped in banana leaves and then placed over the chargrill – slow-cooking so the smell of the banana leaf can be tasted throughout the fish.

Live lobster is chargrilled with prawn oil and Vietnamese satay and then flambadoued with butter – in a way you’d see in Vietnam’s Nha Trang – while scallops are served on the shell with a brown-butter fish sauce, green mango and house-smoked salmon roe.

But perhaps ironically for a restaurant anchored by fire, one of its most popular dishes is served cold. The pho beef tartare has proved a firm favourite with early guests. Marbled Wagyu is seasoned with the flavours of pho – cinnamon, star anise, cloves and black cardamom – before arriving alongside a pho gel and puffed rice paper crackers.

Sydney’s new fish market officially opened on January 19, welcoming  Junda Khoo’s Tam Jiak and the Efendy team’s Hamsi. But when Lua officially opens on Monday March 9, it’ll be to a very different fish market.

“Oh my gosh, it was like 260,000 people per week [in January], right? I think for me, [the delay] has been a blessing in disguise, because the fish market has had time to calm a little bit and now people can come and enjoy without all of the craziness.”

So, finally, the coals are hot and the team is ready to lure you in – perhaps for a cocktail and scallop, or an early lunch of pho tartare, or to go all-out ordering lobsters and prawns kissed by the flambadou’s flame.

Lua
Shop E1C, Sydney Fish Market, 1 Bridge Road, Glebe

Hours:
Mon to Wed 11am–9pm
Thu to Sat 11am–10pm
Sun 11am–9pm

luasydney.com.au
@luasydney