Anchovy Is About to Turn 10. But Thi Le’s Just Getting Started.

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You can’t forget Thi Le’s food. Whether it’s a through a meal at Anchovy, a peerless banh mi at Ca Com, or a Laotian feast from the on-hiatus Jeow, the acclaimed chef’s cooking is singularly memorable. But for the first time, with her new cookbook Viet Kieu, some of Le’s best recipes – from deceptively cookable midweek meals to dishes that stretch the definition of “weekend project” to its limit – have been compiled for you to try at home.

Broadsheet caught up with Le to talk about hitting the double digits, becoming comfortable with change, and what it means to be a viet kieu.

One thing that seems to characterise Anchovy is you and your partner Jia-Yen Lee’s willingness to shake things up and try something new.
I think that’s the beauty for us. We opened a restaurant with no freaking idea, to be honest. It was naive, really. I guess it’s a good and a bad thing.

We work in the business every day, so it has to be engaging for us on a day-to-day basis, otherwise it becomes groundhog day. So we’re always going to try to do something else. We change it up, see what happens, and we learn from it. That’s how we grow.

So Anchovy’s changed a lot over the years?
When we first opened, it was on a shoestring. Like, I literally had one pan. We didn’t have a coolroom, we had two mixing bowls, and our bar equipment was given to us by my housemates. But we just had that young energy, like “Let’s just make it work and see how it is.”

I remember Mum came down in our first six months and was like, “What are you guys doing?” and she went out to the shop and bought us a bunch of things. It was kind of nice in those years – no pressure. We could be nimble.

Do you look back on that time with some rose-tinted glasses?
I do now, 10 years on. Over the years this has become quite demanding, so sometimes I wish I had the same thought patterns as I did 10 years ago when I didn’t give a shit – I would just do it. Now if we’re thinking about doing a renovation, I’ll think “What if someone doesn’t like this?” or “What if we did this and this and this…?”

In 2022, you closed Anchovy for a couple of years to focus on Laotian food with Jeow. Did that break help?
Covid changed everything. The restaurant is so personal to us and, when [the pandemic] happened, we were forced to do a set menu. And it was probably the first time, after six years or something, where I was just like, “This can tell our story a little better.” So people were happy with the set menu, and we were ticking those boxes, but there was a part of me that just needed a break.

I’d been working for about 12 years, non-stop, for other people, so I was just getting burnt out. Even though I was still in the restaurant, I just didn’t have the creativity to push myself. That was another reason to open Jeow – it was the food that I loved to eat, my go-to. And I used that break to write the book.

Viet Kieu comes out next week, what’s it about?
So viet kieu essentially means that you’re Vietnamese, but you don’t actually live in Vietnam. Even as a kid, going back, people would say “Oh she’s a viet kieu”, so they knew I was a foreign Vietnamese. There are good and bad connotations to it.

When I was approached to write a cookbook, I knew I couldn’t write a Vietnamese cookbook – I’d feel like a fraud. I grew up in the western suburbs of Sydney. I’m as much Australian as I am Vietnamese. So Viet Kieu is about that fusion of worlds.

Has embracing that viet kieu identity influenced Anchovy?
I could never pinpoint my style of cooking, but I’ve always cooked like this; I just haven’t always had the vocabulary to explain it.

Did you think Anchovy would last this long?
No. I’m not gonna lie, it’s been so freaking hard, and it’s been up and down. Sometimes I’m like, “Oh my god, just get rid of it.” And other times I’m like, “Oh my god, it’s been 10 years already?” So I feel like I haven’t finished yet.

In the last two or three years I’ve matured as a restaurant owner, and I think I have a clearer vision of what we want to do now. And it’s taken us almost 10 years to get to this point. So I think we can progress, do exciting things and collaborate with more people.

What would your advice be for someone looking to open a restaurant that lasts a decade?
Persevere. And you need to be open to criticism, or it’s just going to get you down. And your support network needs to be solid. Like for me, if I didn’t have JY I think I would have maybe quit or broken down. She’s been such a huge, integral part of the restaurant and my personal life. Having her as a solid rock, and my family and the people who have supported us, has really helped ignite my passion. It makes you want to do it more.

For me the restaurant has never been about being a labour of love versus a moneymaking thing, because I just love collaborating with people about new ideas and food and culture. It keeps it exciting.

Viet Kieu: Recipes Remembered From Vietnam releases on Tuesday April 29. Anchovy will celebrate its 10th birthday in May.

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