Antara 128 bakery Melbourne CBD, Aru and Sunda bakery restaurant, Khanh Nguyen pate en croute, Melbourne CBD bakeries, – Medical Marijuana Program Connection

The team behind restaurants Aru and Sunda are working on a completely new concept for their next hospitality venue: a bakery-slash-brasserie in the heart of Melbourne’s CBD called Antara 128.

The all-day, light-filled venue is in build stage and will open in “the third quarter of 2023”.

It’s been driven by the obsession with pastry and baking that executive chef Khanh Nguyen developed after initially getting his knuckles dusty during Melbourne’s extended period of lockdowns.

One pastry experiment, pâté en croute, in shapes both classic and unusual, went on to become a signature dish at Aru (named The Age Good Food Guide 2023’s Restaurant of the Year), where it combined French pastry technique with the flavours of banh mi.

“With everything I do in life, not just cooking, I always become super obsessed with it, practising, trying to become really good,” he says.

A week of COVID isolation two years ago, during which he taught himself how to make croissants, cemented things.

Antara will give his passion for pastry free rein across breakfast pastries through to pizza that pushes the envelope, wood-fired dishes and pasta, perhaps “accented with a deft flick of Asian spices and sauces”….