Former Aria chef serves up fine-dining skill for food-court prices at Taiwanese hole-in-the-wall

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Chef Omar Hsu used to make 100 kilograms of mashed potato a day at Aria. It was his first role at Matt Moran’s two-hat Sydney restaurant: selecting, washing and placing spuds on trays with rock salt, letting them bake for two hours before mixing them with cream, butter and straining the rich mixture twice.

“I was doing mashed potato for about six months,” he says.

It’s one of many experiences that flavour his menu at Ommi Don, the Taiwanese hole-in-the-wall he opened in May on Broadway.

When you order Ommi Don’s mashed potato, it doesn’t come with Aria’s Opera House view or fine-dining glitz, but it’s shaped by Hsu’s many shifts scooping and perfecting that buttery mash.

Here, it’s been given an Asian food-court remix: the chef serves it cold, with luscious squiggles of house-made mayonnaise, levelled up with some garlic and soy sauce. There are also seaweed crisps on top and a jammy, soft-boiled “hot spring” egg.

“[It’s] like more like Japanese/Taiwanese-style potato salad,” he says.

You can request it as a standalone side dish or as part of the Taiwanese don (rice bowl) sets the canteen specialises in. Pick a main, side and house-made drink (such as tea steeped with winter melon sugar) and your bank balance will only drop by about $20.

Try the three-cup chicken Hsu would cook for his Aria colleagues for staff meals. It’s named for the ratios used in the recipe (“one cup of soy sauce, one cup sesame oil, one cup rice wine”) and is Taiwan’s national dish. “It’s like sushi in Japan,” he says. It’s everywhere in the chef’s homeland, particularly at restaurants focused on stir-fries and beer.

Hsu was born in Taichung, west of Taiwan’s centre, to a household of chefs: his grandfather sold duck rice at a hawker stall and his dad specialised in Japanese cooking. He recalls informally washing dishes at his father’s restaurant from age 10; by 15, he was officially working in kitchens.

Hsu came to Australia to train in Western cuisine and spent nearly a decade working for Moran, starting at Opera Bar making chips and pizzas, graduating to steaks and sides at Aria and, at one point, turning Barangaroo House into an igloo that served cheese fondue.

Ommi Don’s menu showcases the food of his birthplace and his Western training. The teppanyaki pepper sauce that enriches various rice bowls recalls Taiwanese night market steaks, as well as the classic French sauces he learnt at Aria. The “magic powder” seasoning he sprinkles on his chicken is made from Asian staples, such as bonito and seaweed extracts, but is inspired by a “magic powder” that formed part of Aria’s flavour arsenal.

The central influence, though, is the Ommi Foods business he started with wife Josie Yuan during the first COVID lockdown. She’s also a chef from Taiwan and they began selling the street food of their homeland when restaurants were shut.

On May 1, 2020, they made golden kimchi on her birthday. It’s a Taiwanese specialty that’s vividly coloured with fermented carrot, tofu and garlic. This sunny cabbage condiment became the star of their Ommi Foods business and Ommi Don menu, too (jars of it are available from the shop’s shelves).

It’s a pungent contrast to Korean kimchi: funky, creamy and hard to describe, I’d compare it to salted egg yolk – except it’s vegan. It brightens the pork belly and fried tofu bowls and is one of many punchy side dishes.

In Taiwan, it’s also known as “opium” kimchi, because it’s said to be so addictive. Like the mashed potato on the menu, Hsu has given it his own twist. Ommi Don might not have a harbourside view, but it does tell a story about Sydney that’s unique, multicultural and ultimately delicious.