Thoughtful, skilled and determined, she’s been a chef who other chefs watch for 10 years. But this year, Thi Le released a bold cookbook that doubled as a manifesto for who she is and what she stands for.
To gain an insight into the spirit of this year’s Age Good Food Guide Chef of the Year, you could do worse than look in her courtyard. In the outdoor space shared by Anchovy and Ca Com Banh Mi Bar, Thi Le’s side-by-side eateries on Bridge Road in Richmond, you’ll see barrels of house-made fish sauce.
The DIY project is unique: thousands of Melbourne restaurants use fish sauce but making it is almost unknown. Unless you’re Thi Le.
In 2022, she went on a fishing boat in Port Phillip Bay, netted 800 kilograms of anchovies, fermented them with salt and sunshine over three years, and is only now transferring this liquid gold into bottles.
“I’m not sure I was surprised when Thi first told me of her intention to brew her own fish sauce, as casually as one would propose baking cake for afternoon tea,” wrote Jia-Yen Lee, Le’s partner in business and life, in Viet Kieu, the cookbook and memoir they released in April. “Thi’s mind is seldom idle; she is constantly thinking about the next idea, the next improvement, the next venture.”
Striving and questing has been characteristic of Le ever since she became a chef, first in Sydney at restaurants including Italian eatery Aqua Dining and Christine Manfield’s spice-centric Universal, then in Melbourne venues including Euro-leaning Cumulus Inc.
‘Anchovy was instrumental in taking an immigrant cuisine we thought we were used to and presenting it in a way we like to eat in Melbourne.’
Besha Rodell, The Age’s chief restaurant critic
When the couple opened Anchovy 10 years ago, it was the first time Le had cooked in a nominally Vietnamese kitchen, albeit one that brought in influences, techniques and miscellaneous deliciousness from Europe, Turkey and all around South-East Asia.
The restaurant surged out of the gates, earning a Good Food chef’s hat in its first months. Reviewer Gemima Cody praised the pâté chaud, a buttery pastry filled with gingered pork mince and wood-ear mushroom, and a fried blood pudding fragrant with star anise and served on a lettuce boat.
“Anchovy was one of Melbourne’s really important openings,” says The Age’s chief restaurant critic Besha Rodell.
“It was instrumental in taking an immigrant cuisine we thought we were used to and presenting it in a way we like to eat in Melbourne: a casual but refined wine bar context, serious and thoughtful, not cheap eats but not pretentious fine dining either.”
Today’s menu includes chicken liver parfait and kumquat jam on spongy Chinese doughnuts, and goat ribs with fermented bean curd and green chilli sauce. Durian parfait is enhanced by yellow kiwi and bergamot.
“Thi obsesses about provenance and processes, and cares about details in a way that diners might not consciously notice but that ensure the end product is more meaningful,” says Rodell.
Anchovy has always been an intensely personal restaurant, with Le in the kitchen and Lee running the floor. Like anything human, it’s changed over time.
The restaurant went on hiatus between mid-2022 and mid-2024, replaced by Le and Lee’s Laotian diner Jeow. Partly, this was to give Le more time and space to deal with issues that arose as she wrangled the narrative that would sit alongside the recipes in her book.
Le was born in 1985 in a Malaysian refugee camp, after her mother had fled Vietnam. She grew up in western Sydney, in an area without many Vietnamese households. “I never felt I fitted in as really Vietnamese or really Australian,” she told The Age recently.
“But I remember looking at our cookbooks one day, reading all the spines – there’s Korean, Burmese, northern Thai – all of a sudden it made sense. I was viet kieu.”
The term refers to people of Vietnamese ancestry living elsewhere. Sometimes used pejoratively, Le has embraced Viet Kieu as the title of her book and a descriptor of her restaurant. The cookbook-memoir showcases Le’s incredibly detailed, storied approach to cooking. It also reveals a childhood marked by abuse.
“Thi has always been a fierce voice for anyone who feels caught between two cultures,” says Good Food Guide co-editor Emma Breheny. “Sharing her story through this book has been so powerful, a watershed for so many people cooking in Australia today. Even beyond food, many first-generation Australians will feel seen in that experience.”
Le has been a chef that chefs watch ever since Anchovy opened. So why is she the Good Food Guide’s Chef of the Year for 2026?
“There are three reasons it feels right,” says Rodell. “Anchovy opened a decade ago: it’s very small, very personal, a labour of love and it’s important to celebrate when a business like that makes it this long.
“Secondly, Thi put out a startlingly honest book, not a polished celebrity chef book but something messy and hard and beautiful.
“Finally, the restaurant still feels totally vital and current. Anchovy felt like a revelation when it opened, and it still feels like that today.”
A free 80-page Good Food Guide liftout with all the award winners and Critics’ Picks will be inserted in The Age on Tuesday, October 28.
The Good Food app is the home of the 2026 edition of the Good Food Guide, with more than 500 reviews. The app is free for premium subscribers of The Age and also available as a standalone subscription. You can download the Good Food app here.
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