Apache back and bigger than ever at new venue
Saturday, 29 March 2025
An award-winning Vietnamese restaurant has moved to a new location near the capital’s party strip ‒ and business is going strong.
Apache owner Le Minh said the eatery had moved to 66 Tory St, the former location of Burmese Restaurant Mabel’s.
It offers a modern take on Vietnamese street hawker food and won Burger Wellington in 2016 for its “Bang Bang” burger.
Apache was in Wakefield St for about a decade. The previous location required earthquake strengthening, Minh said, as well as being close to the nearby construction taking place on the new Wellington Library building.
Caffeinated Dragon owner Rhys Kaan told The Post he had crowdfunded $19,000 to move his business away from the noise, but Minh said the construction hadn’t particularly affected the restaurant because the regulars still came.
However, there had been “uncertainty” regarding the lease.
“We weren’t going to move from Wakefield, even with all the road work and things going on … things were still working really well. It was just an opportunity that came by at exactly the same time ‒ it's time to do something different.”
Minh said he had been planning to return home and visit his mother over the holidays and then start fresh, when a supplier told him the Tory St location would soon become available.
He and his family had been cleaning and fitting out Tory St for the past several weeks, preparing to reopen.
The new location had a much larger seating plan, as well as a bar area, and a private seating area for people looking to book for large gatherings or reserve a private table.
The bar area would be for walk-ins, but some customers liked to call in and book the bar for a more chill vibe, Minh said.
There had been a sizeable demand for the semi-private seating area. The restaurant had only been open for two weeks, but had already hosted four functions already, with the space able to host 32 people.
All the furniture and room’s furnishings had been custom-made, he said. The distinctive birdcages that hang from the dividing wall were purchased from a man who had retrieved them from a movie set.
“Most of them have actually been in a film,” he said.
The vibe of Tory St and the adjacent Courtenay Place was different to Wakefield St, which had more customers coming in for lunch, Minh said.
On Tory St, customers were coming in for dinner, although the lunch service was also doing well, he said, with the three lunch services the restaurant had serviced so far seeing 50 customers a day.
Currently, the lunch service was being offered Wednesday to Friday, as the staff slowly returned from a break.
Going forward, Apache would slowly ease into providing lunch and dinner services, five days a week, Minh said.
*CORRECTION: Apache’s owner is Le Minh. An earlier version of this story spelled his name incorrectly. (Amended March 29, 2025. 5.31pm)