But that’s were Gen Y does it differently. For Charlie Carrington has transformed his love of both travel and cooking into Atlas Dining, his — yes — first restaurant.

It’s an alluring concept for a chef. Travel a country; take in what you see and eat and turn it into an evolving menu to play out over a few months. Then travel some more, and return with a new cuisine, new menu, new concept. First stop on Charlie’s journey as chef-owner is Vietnam.

It’s an impressive debut — for while he’s just 22, Charlie has already spent years in kitchens, cooking since he was 15 doing stints around the world, most recently at Firedoor in Sydney learning from Lennox Hastie how to cook with flame and coals.

And so it is here. Fire powers the open kitchen manned by black T-shirted, denim-aproned chefs with tweezers at the ready.

Just a couple of months old and Atlas is full this Tuesday night. The handsomely made-over former Indian restaurant now features artfully distressed walls, a subdued palate of blonde wood and tan leather, and twinkling glassware that the equally handsomely made-over (surprisingly older) crowd of southsiders is raising with relish.

It’s a simple, great-value proposition — a no-choice four courses for $50, or with an additional two for $65 a head, and once chosen, a very clever leather-bound cutlery roll is presented so you have every implement at hand.

There are moments of knockout brilliance; the highlight of the meal actually the first dish to arrive. On a moat of sweet potato spiked with the tropical sweetness of coconut with a hit of chilli jam lie slices of supple king salmon freshened with pomelo pearls. But it’s the addition of funky fermented daikon that perfectly captures the sense of the streets of Hanoi, where wafts of heavenly sweet incense can be replaced in an instance with the hellish hit of a rudimentary sewerage system.

More daikon — pickled with a great heat — with a duck course, batons of which stand guard around a tranche of good meat with a lick of savoury smokiness from those coals. A sauce of preserved vegetables is drizzled about, and while it has a deep Vegemite richness, it’s very salty.

Another dish of good ideas — fresh and charred asparagus with a sticky-yolked,
slow-cooked “hen’s” egg — was also let down by a sauce of wood ear mushrooms that was incredibly salty.

Over the six courses, it’s an assault of salt and too much pepper that’s like being shouted at from the plate. And when even the piece of chocolate that comes with the bill is pepper-topped, too much was certainly enough.

This is no truer than the wagyu beef pho tartare that’s wickedly inventive, wildly creative and has wonderful sense of humour. It was also inedible.

While the spice of white and black pepper and a ginger-garlic-chilli seasoning combine into a heart-rushing, lip-tingling evocation of MSG that’s a key ingredient in authentic pho, it’s so  heavy-handed not even the sticky, almost syrupy, pho (that’s actually star anise-steeped beef fat) in cups of charred onion could save it.

It’s these good ideas overplayed that show a youthful exuberance that will, in time, hopefully settle into a more restrained sense of creation.

Because there’s a lot to like here, whether it’s the young kitchen that works together a treat. Or the staff on the floor who are also very good. A Vietnamese passport stamped with on-theme cocktails (kumquat negroni, pho martini) and Bia Hanoi cans is a nice touch, while the short wine list stops off in random lands like a discount flight to Europe.

While there’s unmistakable generosity to a big slab of charred sourdough that comes with smoked honey-drizzled chicken liver pate to start, the gesture was let down by bread too doughy, dense and chewy. And of the two desserts to end, suffice to say fried shallots don’t usually feature with good reason, while the toasted rice and cashew finale felt a bit like eating bird food.

Charlie is an exciting talent with vision and gumption and I look forward to his next adventure — the food of Israel in January, followed by Korea.

Atlas is good. But it’s yet to set the world on fire.

This review originally appeared on heraldsun.com.au.