Chef and restaurateur James Viles is set to open the doors to his second venture, Wilma on 3 December in Canberra’s CBD.
The progressive Asian barbeque restaurant will have 200 plus capacity and will focus on primitive barbequing techniques to enhance dish flavours.
“We’re not traditional Central or Southern Asian cuisine. We’re taking those flavours that Australians have fallen in love with since the 1960s” says Viles.
“There’s a Chinese restaurant in every regional Australian town, and the reason for that is that those flavours and those profiles, the Australian culture was adapted to them, we love them. It doesn’t matter who you are, we all love it.”
Viles is known for his now-closed two-hatted restaurant Biota Dining once located in Bowral where he adapted an ethos for sustainability and innovative cooking.
The chef will use a custom-made offset smoker to burn wood and an impressive half-tone two tier konro yakitori grill made with steel from a local blacksmith.
Besides Yakitori, the menu’s barbeque selection will cover options like roasted duck, char siu pork and a glazed chilli beef short rib.
The restaurant will provide two banquet options and house a live raw bar where diners can watch chefs prepare sashimi and oysters.
Snack options include choy bow, prawn toast with Davidson plum sweet and sour sauce and a Wilma sausage sandwich with bulldog sauce.
Providing the cocktails is Wilma’s sister bar, the Pearl, which will shake up Asian-inspired drinks such as the Osaka Old Fashioned and Lychee Dragon fruit Margarita; to be paired with bar snacks like scallop prawn tartare, snag sangas and emperor tarts.
Wilma will operate from Wednesday to Thursday from 8 December.
Image Credit: Pew Pew Studio for Wilma