‘It just couldn’t exist anywhere else’: the Vietnamese seafood eatery hiding in a Sydney pub

‘A celebration of textures – chewy, slippery, crunchy, bouncy, all of it’: Balmain bugs at Rocs and Rolls in the Wiley Park Hotel. Photograph: Jessica Hromas/The Guardian

The last place I would expect to find spicy Vietnamese-style razor clams and Balmain bugs lathered in a salted duck yolk sauce is in Wiley Park Hotel. About 40 minutes’ drive south-west of the Sydney CBD, it is a pub for cheap drinks, watching NRL and making bets – an ordinary pub like hundreds across Australia.

Except for the dining room. Here, a tiny kitchen called Rocs and Rolls dishes out trays of seafood, grilled meats and hotpots to Vietnamese families and young couples. They huddle on bright yellow chairs in an otherwise barely decorated room, chatting and tearing into saucy plates of snails with enthusiasm.