Though the past two years have seen many Melbourne residents experiment with fermentation projects at home – from mastering the fine art of lacto-fermenting pickles to brewing their own kombucha – perhaps few have fallen into the rabbit hole as deeply as chef Dennis Yong.

A penchant for fermenting, bordering on an obsession, saw Yong leave his role at Sunda Dining to throw himself into a series of waste-minimising experiments, with a gusto that could rival Noma’s pickling sovereign René Redzepi.

‘I grew up [in Malaysia] surrounded by fermented products – soy sauce, preserved Chinese mustard, fermented bean curd, fish sauce…’ Yong explains. ‘The fermentation process fascinates me.’

Having spent much time rescuing ugly produce and giving it new, delicious life, he emerged from the rabbit hole with the concept for a 25-seater wine and ferment bar. Joining forces with the group behind ARU Restaurant and Sunda Dining, Yong has now opened the doors to Parcs at 198 Little Collins Street, Melbourne.

‘Parcs is about changing perceptions – both in the approach we as chefs take toward building a more sustainable restaurant and food system, and also in the way our guests receive the menu. Off-cuts and scraps aren’t dirty words,’ Yong says. ‘So many perfectly good trimmings and off-cuts are lost in restaurants to shape bread, fruit, vegetables, meat and fish toward a certain aesthetic.’

In fact, the name Parcs is an anadrome for scraps. And, while the venue may champion a minimal waste approach, its aromatic dishes are far from minimal when it comes to flavour.

‘In a way, the flavours I grew up with play a big role in how my food tastes. Parcs, however, isn’t an Asian restaurant. I want the menu to be borderless in cuisine,’ he says.

Among its piquant dishes are oysters dressed in mango kombucha and aged in bees’ wax; Chinese donuts with moromi zaatar and smoked sunflower marrow; Buffalo-style mushrooms with a preserved fruit tofu cream and pickled broccolini; and kangaroo with treacle sauce and fermented natives. Yong also insists his ‘Umami e pepe’ dish is not to be missed. For dessert, there’s a difficult-to-resist brioche miso ice cream with poached pear, cacao husk and walnut. Yong also produces and sells a take-home orange kosho and bread miso, jarred and ready for home cooking.

The Parcs menu sees ingredients given a second chance in not only in its dishes but also in its creatively concocted cocktails dreamt up by Darren Leaney, which will be offered alongside a rotating choice of small-batch, minimal intervention wines.

Though Yong’s menu cannot be defined by its continent of origin, he says there is one criterion his menu items must adhere to: ‘regardless of the ‘blend’, they must make cohesive sense flavour-wise, and be delicious.’

‘We want to encourage curious eating. We want our guests to be excited, surprised, confused and, most importantly, have an open mind set.’

Parcs
198 Little Collins St, Melbourne
Tue – Sat, 12pm until late
parcs.com.au

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