We've supplied plants to the Bentley Restaurant Group before, most recently for Watermans in Barangaroo, so when they were opening Ashe, tucked into a laneway just off Angel Place in the CBD, on Ash Street of all places, we were glad to be asked back for phase one of the fit-out.
Photo: @ashe.restaurant
Plants That Fit The Cuisine, Not Just The Room
South East Asia is one of the most plant-rich growing regions on earth, and that relationship between food and greenery made this an easy brief to get properly excited about. Bamboo, palms and broad-leafed tropicals aren't backdrop in that part of the world, they're part of the same landscape the cuisine grows out of, so bringing them into the room isn't decoration for its own sake, it's the fit-out telling the truth about where the food comes from.
For phase one, we put together a run of planters with bamboo along the window line, and it's done exactly what we hoped. Laneways in the CBD tend to run to brick, concrete and glass, all hard surfaces and hard edges, so a run of bamboo catching the light in the window does real work breaking that up before you've even stepped inside. There's a rustle and movement to it a static planting just doesn't give you, which matters more in a laneway setting than it would on a wide street, since people are walking close enough to actually notice.
Alongside it, a junior statement Monstera has gone into the dining room itself, genuinely one of the best single plants we've placed in a venue this year. Where the bamboo works the glass line, the Monstera works up close, big glossy fenestrated leaves catching the light differently depending on where you're sitting, a shape that reads tropical and a little wild against the fit-out's otherwise clean lines. It's already the plant people lean in for a look at on the way to their table.
The Food
We had dinner there ourselves once the fit-out was in, and it's easy to see why Ashe has become one of the most talked-about openings this year.
The flatbread arrives first, made fully in house and still warm from the oven, faultless on its own before anything else joins it. That's where the mortadella from LPs Quality Meats comes in, an Inner West smallgoods specialist producing the kind of proper, old-school mortadella most places have quietly given up on, a genuine masterclass in smallgoods sitting on a faultless base rather than propping it up. You don't get a knife, you get a proper pair of cooking shears and you're left to cut the thing up yourself at the table, which sounds like a gimmick until you're doing it, at which point it's one of the more satisfying five minutes you'll spend at a restaurant this year.
Then the oxtail dumplings arrive, and this is the dish worth booking the table for on its own. The rendang isn't sitting underneath as a sauce, it's cooked straight into the oxtail filling, so every dumpling carries that rich, slow-built spice before you've done anything at all. The move, which our table worked out about halfway through, is to tear one open, spoon the smoked and grilled bone marrow over the top like a sauce, and finish it with a hit of fermented chilli. Messy, a bit of a production, and one of the best combinations of smoke, fat, spice and heat we've had on a plate this year.
The Bangalow pork cutlet closed things out, flame grilled with a proper char and carved up at the table the way you'd expect from a good rib eye, not a pork chop, sliced and built for sharing. The sauce is where the dish gets clever. Say "sweet and sour" and most people picture something bright and one-note, but this one runs on rhubarb and ginger, tart and warm rather than sticky, built to sit alongside good meat rather than cover it up.
It's a great venue and one of the standout restaurant openings of the year, and we were glad to be part of getting the space ready. We're looking forward to going back to work through the rest of the menu.
If you're opening or refreshing a hospitality venue, get in touch. Consider us your plant sommelier, matching the greenery to the room and the menu.
