Mostly, in food, fusion is a frightening notion. Food mash ups rarely result in something spectacular, but every now and then a chef comes along to rattle the cage and deliver a new experience that feels perfectly normal. Or, at the very least, so right. ACME chef Mitch Orr has never really been a shrinking violet. An abundance of talent refined under the tutorage of many of our best chefs, and a generous ego have allowed him to throw caution to the wind and combine Asian flavours and Italian technique with a mindseye to ensure deliciousness is front and centre.

The brainchild of Andy Emerson, Cam Fairbairn, Mitch Orr and Ed Loveday (ACME), ACME is in fact one of the best restaurants to emerge in recent years. Striped back exposed walls, dynamite stick lights hanging from the ceiling, and the option of tables or bench seating. It’s brave, yet comfortably honest, and so too the succinct wine list that adds solid riffs to Orr’s score.

To start his food is somewhat tongue-in-cheek as it points to the guilty pleasures of our past. His baloney sandwich is a fancy hat-tilt to the devon and tomato sauce sandwiches of our youth, while philly cheese, salmon and Jatz screams yesteryear party Australiana style. Then a sesame-dressed salad of papaya and daikon lands us in our Asian region before he lets his talent for pasta take over – though the chef himself stops short of calling his food ‘Italian’. Tongues of linguine arrive licked by black garlic and burnt chilli. Spanner crab and sweetcorn swim with alphebto that spells out ACME, while egg yolk spills over fabulously fatty pigs head and macaroni. It’s one of the most satisfying things I’ve put in my mouth and it seems I’m not alone. It’s still one of the hottest tickets in town.

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