Does miso belong on an Italian menu? Alex Wong thinks it does. Or at least it belongs on his Italian menu. “I use five different miso in this kitchen,” says Lana’s executive chef. “For the umami, the earthiness and the salt. It all comes back to flavour.” Wong is between services as he speaks, metres from the Lana kitchen where Asian ingredients crank up the flavour in his east-of-Italian fare.
Growing up in Newcastle with Chinese roots, and cutting his pro-chef teeth in Italian kitchens, Wong’s mega mix of influences has come to define his food. It’s all there; his uncle’s Chinese takeaway and his mother’s stir-fried spaghetti Bolognese, his best friend’s Italian school lunches and the pasta he made from scratch over and over again at Ajò in Rozelle.
Working under Steven Yeomans (ex-Ormeggio) at Il Lago, and Daniel Mulligan (ex-Pilu) at Ajò, Wong was quick to respect Italian cuisine and culture. Appreciation for his own background, though, didn’t come until later. “I wasn’t into my heritage at all as a teenager,” he says. “It wasn’t until I qualified as a chef and moved out, that I started missing home.”
It was at Osteria di Russo & Russo that Wong learned the art of respectfully altering Italian recipes, adding native Australian ingredients. Then, as executive chef at Lana – originally conceived as Hinchcliff House’s contemporary Italian fine diner – Wong wrote himself into the menu via dashes of miso, yuzu kosho and fish sauce. “I’ve gone out of my comfort zone to build a story that’s 80 per cent Italian, 20 per cent Asian,” he says. “That’s
