Yang’s Castle

When Alexander Wong opened Yang’s Food Truck, his first idea was to make his own idea of Asian food, combining cuisines. Now, with a new space in Castlecrag, he’s brought his original plan to life.

The restaurant doesn’t use particularly esoteric ingredients, but it doesn’t serve one neatly classifiable cuisine, either. Wong calls it Asian Australian.

Wong has cherry picked bits from each East Asian cuisine and pulled them together. He’s made a deconstructed bánh mì with a baguette chopped, toasted and buttered, with a ball of homemade duck-liver pâté the size of a scoop of ice cream. It comes with mayo and greens for dipping, spreading and mixing. The crisp-skinned, succulent lamb ribs are braised in master stock before being deep-fried. The roti comes with either confit chicken and Hainan chilli sauce, or chilli-caramel pork belly and kimchi.

Wong prefers local wines and spirits. There’s Small Mouth Vodka from Pokolbin, beer on tap from Shenanigans Brewery and an all-Australian line-up of gin. The small, open-plan space is packed most nights so, unless you don’t mind sitting at the bar, remember to book.