Can a food truck really turn into a fine diner? This smoky skewer spot gives it a red hot go

How bash you spell from being a streetwise nutrient stall to a good diner successful a substance of weeks? At Easter, Raymond Hou and Alina Van were grilling wagyu and lamb firepops (yakitori-style skewers) astatine their fiery red, custom-made barbecue stall astatine the Royal Easter Show, arsenic a bare assemblage ate consecutive from the stick.

Now they’re grilling wagyu and lamb firepops successful their recently opened good diner successful Enmore, wherever stemmed vino glasses enactment the shelves and polished cutlery rests connected linen.

Wagyu cubes melt connected the lingua similar profoundly meaty butter.Louie Douvis

It’s rather the switch, but it’s been a agelong clip coming. Hou and Van launched Firepop pop-ups successful 2019. By 2024, they needed bricks and mortar. “We wanted to decently big our guests successful our ain place,” they say. Firepop, the restaurant, opened successful March, proudly showcasing a “chef’s table”, a 3.5-metre antagonistic facing a line-up of charcoal and wood grills welded into spot by Hou. You’re adjacent capable to consciousness warm, but not adjacent capable to baste yourself successful ail lipid and crook each 3 minutes.

There is besides a small, moody workplace eating room, with upstairs eating opening mid-May, implicit with fireplace and banquette seating.

The signature cumin-spiced lamb skewers evoke north-eastern China.Louie Douvis

Of the fewer dishes not licked by fire, Sydney stone oysters (Appellation from Merimbula) travel puddled with fermented chilli and digit lime ($8 each). There is ever crudo specified arsenic sweet, delicate earthy boar food ($25) marinated successful achromatic soy, citrus and mandarin oil. Corn rib ($16) is instant fun, a flank of maize cob smoky from the grill nether a ablution of caciocavallo, resting connected tied maize husks to beryllium wherever it’s travel from.

The signature instrumentality is charcoal-grilled New England lamb spiced with sesame and cumin dukkah that evokes north-eastern China. It’s great. But astir of the sticks are bully – bouncy small grilled chickenhearted hearts from Aurum Poultry ($14) that enactment similar petals of offal, and skewers of fatty and fiery shishito and padron peppers ($12). The cook sends retired a frozen grape to chill your lingua if you get a random super-hot one, which I did; sweet. Two locals adjacent to maine are “here for the bony marrow”, which is touched with soy, sake, miso and pome and served connected 2 half-bones ($14); ace buttery.

It each sounds similar drinking food, but elevated. Van has enactment unneurotic a idiosyncratic list, the wines chosen for shared values oregon idiosyncratic association. The 2019 La Violetta Nova ($20) is simply a breezy blend of shiraz, pinot, grenache and a interaction of Vermentino from the Great Southern portion of WA.

There are steaks, excessively – Stone Axe full-blood wagyu scotch fillet is $199 for 300 grams – but you tin get that elsewhere. Here, you should effort the full-blood MBS9+ wagyu beef cube ($19), dressed successful jus and crunchy with oversea brackish and crisp garlic. With each that marbling (raw, it truly does look similar pinkish marble), it melts connected the lingua similar profoundly meaty butter. There’s besides a gentle lactic crockery of crushed potatoes ($15) with dill and yoghurt that’s similar eating clouds, if you should privation to devour clouds.

Buttermilk panna cotta with strawberries.Louie Douvis

It seems the times are close for joining up with a mate for a fewer skewers, past seeing what the evening brings. Tip: if you person a starter and a fewer skewers and privation to extremity connected dessert (panna cotta made from buttermilk near implicit from the butter-making process and served with strawberries marinated successful achromatic balsamic, $18) past bash the acceptable paper and get each that for $80 a head.

Somehow, Firepop manages to support the thrill of the grill, with its whiffs of achromatic pepper, slicks of ail lipid and crunch of reddish bulb pickles, adjacent portion delivering it with humble grace and quiescent determination.

It’s different motion that the nutrient coming from the interior westbound – interior westbound cuisine, if you volition – is exciting, driven by ambition, enactment ethic, suburban pridefulness and inspiration. No flash successful the pan, then, but a dilatory burn.

Restaurant reviews, quality and the hottest openings served to your inbox.

Sign up