Amé brings Japanese-Peruvian Nikkei cooking to a heritage Darlinghurst address in October, adding a new culinary thread to Oxford Street.
By late afternoon, Oxford Street is already beginning its nightly transformation. Shopfronts catch the last light, buses move steadily through Darlinghurst and the pavements fill with people heading towards dinner, drinks or somewhere further into the city.
At 84 Oxford Street, a 1927 heritage-listed building is preparing for a new chapter.
This October, the ground floor will become Amé, a restaurant from ESCA Hospitality Group built around Nikkei cuisine, the Japanese-Peruvian cooking tradition that developed through more than 130 years of Japanese immigration to Peru. The restaurant will be led by executive chef Erik Ortolani, whose current kitchens include Itō and Jōji.
There is something appropriate about the setting. Darlinghurst has long been one of Sydney's neighbourhoods where cultures, communities and cooking styles meet without much ceremony. Oxford Street is rarely still, and the restaurants that line it tend to reflect that movement.
Amé will enter this landscape with a cuisine that is itself the result of movement.
Amé And The Long Journey Of Nikkei Cuisine
Nikkei cooking did not begin as a restaurant trend. Its history reaches back to the arrival of Japanese migrants in Peru in the late nineteenth century, when Japanese techniques and ingredients gradually encountered Peruvian produce, flavours and cooking traditions.
Over generations, the two cuisines became intertwined.
Japanese precision met the acidity of citrus, the heat of Peruvian chillies and the abundance of seafood. Familiar ingredients were approached differently, while dishes evolved into something that belonged to neither tradition exclusively.
It is this history that Ortolani is exploring at Amé.
His approach will not attempt to reproduce a Peruvian restaurant in Darlinghurst, nor simply add Peruvian flavours to Japanese dishes. Instead, the chef is drawing on his experience with Japanese cooking and his time travelling through Peru, considering how the two traditions can meet through the ingredients available in Sydney.
That distinction matters.
Sydney has become adept at absorbing culinary influences from around the world, but the most interesting examples rarely feel like exercises in combining two cuisines. They become part of the city's own way of eating.
Amé is being conceived with that in mind.
A Chef Looking Between Two Culinary Worlds
For Ortolani, the restaurant represents a new direction.
He is already associated with Itō, where Japanese cooking meets influences from his Italian background. At Amé, that conversation moves further west, towards Peru and the distinctive flavours of Nikkei cuisine.
A research trip to Peru earlier this year helped shape the direction of the menu. Rather than returning with a fixed collection of recipes, Ortolani has spoken about coming back with more questions, an indication that the project is as much about understanding as it is about interpretation.
Some of the dishes that have been previewed give an idea of where that thinking is heading.
There will be sashimi, including a version finished with fried quinoa. Beef tataki will be paired with a take on salsa criolla, the Peruvian onion and chilli condiment. Causa, the layered potato dish associated with Peru, is also being considered.
Anticuchos, meanwhile, will bring the restaurant towards the grill, with skewers forming another important part of the menu.
There is also a dessert with a history of its own. Ortolani's guava kakigori, first developed for an Itō Nikkei pop-up, is expected to return at Amé, bringing Peruvian fruit together with the Japanese tradition of shaved ice.
These details suggest a menu that will be recognisable in its foundations while allowing the chef considerable room to move.
Amé Finds Its Place On Oxford Street
The location is part of the story.
Amé will occupy the ground floor of the heritage-listed building at 84 Oxford Street, on the corner of Oxford and Foley streets. The address sits within the emerging Oxford & Foley precinct, which already includes Mecca Coffee and Aenza. Soho House is also planned for the neighbouring site, with an opening expected in 2028.
For a restaurant built around a cuisine shaped by migration, the choice of Darlinghurst feels fitting.
Oxford Street has always carried traces of different Sydneys. Its history is written into the old buildings, the shopfronts and the people who have passed through them. The street has changed considerably over the decades, but it remains one of those places where Sydney's appetite for the new is particularly visible.
Amé will arrive during another period of change.
The Oxford & Foley precinct is becoming increasingly food-focused, while the broader Darlinghurst area continues to attract restaurants that are willing to look beyond conventional European and Asian categories.
The result is not a neatly defined dining district so much as a patchwork of different ideas, which may be more characteristic of Sydney anyway.
A New Chapter For ESCA
Amé is the latest project from ESCA Hospitality Group, whose Sydney portfolio includes AALIA, Besa, Nour, Itō and Jōji, along with the recently opened AALIA Wine Room in Martin Place.
The group has increasingly worked across different interpretations of Asian and Middle Eastern influenced dining, and Amé gives it an opportunity to explore a culinary tradition that remains comparatively unfamiliar to many Sydney diners.
Ibrahim Moubadder, ESCA's co-founder and creative director, has described Nikkei cuisine as vibrant and layered but still underrepresented in Sydney. The group sees an opportunity not simply to introduce the cuisine, but to consider how it might evolve in the context of this city.
That idea is central to the restaurant's identity.
There is little point in treating Sydney as a blank canvas. It is already a city with its own ingredients, habits, climate and dining culture. A dish may have its roots in Lima or Osaka, but once it reaches Oxford Street it inevitably becomes part of another story.
The Kitchen Behind Amé
Ortolani will be joined by Kihoon Kim, currently associated with Jōji, who will take on the role of head chef at Amé.
Kim brings experience in Japanese fine dining and omakase, particularly in the handling of seafood and precise knife work. His skills provide a Japanese foundation for a restaurant whose flavours will extend well beyond Japan.
The partnership is deliberately collaborative.
Ortolani's experience and interest in Peru provide one direction, while Kim's Japanese background brings another. Rather than separating the two influences, the restaurant is being built around their interaction.
That may prove particularly important in the treatment of seafood.
Nikkei cooking has a natural affinity with the Pacific, and Sydney's access to high-quality local seafood provides another point of connection between the two sides of the cuisine. The result does not need to imitate Peru to acknowledge its influence.
Instead, it can allow the ingredients to do some of the travelling.
Why Nikkei Has A Place In Sydney
Sydney's restaurant culture has always been shaped by immigration.
Some of the city's most familiar foods began as expressions of communities maintaining connections to places far away. Over time, those foods became part of everyday Sydney, often changing along the way.
Nikkei cuisine offers another version of that story.
Japanese migration to Peru created a culinary tradition that took shape over generations. Its arrival in Sydney is therefore not simply the importation of another international cuisine. It is the continuation of a story that has already travelled once, crossing the Pacific before reaching Australia.
That history also explains why Nikkei can feel simultaneously familiar and unfamiliar.
A diner may recognise sashimi, Japanese grilling or shaved ice, then encounter Peruvian chilli, citrus, potato or corn in the same meal. The pleasure lies partly in recognising the individual elements while noticing how differently they behave together.
For Sydney, which often prides itself on culinary diversity, it is an opportunity to broaden the conversation further.
Amé Opens This October
Amé is scheduled to open in October 2026, although an exact opening date has not yet been announced.
Once open, the restaurant will operate seven days a week for dinner, with lunch served from Wednesday to Sunday.
The location is:
Amé
84 Oxford Street
Darlinghurst, Sydney, NSW 2010
Opening: October 2026
Dinner: Seven days a week
Lunch: Wednesday to Sunday
Cuisine: Japanese-Peruvian Nikkei
The official restaurant updates are available through Amé's social channels, while ESCA Hospitality Group is expected to release further information as the opening approaches.
For now, the menu remains deliberately incomplete, which perhaps suits a restaurant whose premise is based on exchange rather than fixed boundaries.
The most interesting part of a new restaurant is often the period before it opens, when an address begins to acquire a new identity but has not yet settled into its routines. There are still questions about what will become a signature dish, which tables will become favourites and how the room will feel when Oxford Street is dark outside.
A Different Kind Of Arrival
By October, the evenings in Darlinghurst will be warming as spring moves towards summer.
Oxford Street will be busy, as it nearly always is. People will move between bars, restaurants, theatres and homes, while buses continue along the road and the old buildings hold the heat of the day.
Inside 84 Oxford Street, Amé will begin its own conversation between places.
Japan and Peru are separated by an ocean, yet their culinary histories have already been connected for more than a century. Now that story is travelling again, this time to Sydney.
The restaurant's significance will ultimately be found not in how closely it reproduces either cuisine, but in what happens when those traditions meet the particular character of this city.
Perhaps that is the most Sydney part of the story.
A new restaurant arrives carrying influences from somewhere else, listens to the place around it, and gradually becomes part of the neighbourhood. On Oxford Street, where the city has always made room for another voice, Amé will begin that process this spring.
And somewhere between the sharpness of citrus, the heat of chilli, the clean cut of a knife through seafood and the evening traffic outside, a new version of an old migration story will begin.