Written by 
Decked out in breeze blocks, mosaic tiles and hanging greenery, it’s serving kangaroo tartare, wagyu short rib, along with Latin American-inspired cocktail and wine lists.
The last time I arrived to interview Ross Ledingham, he was perched atop two storeys of scaffolding, madly securing armfuls of greenery to a ceiling. That was the day before the opening of rooftop bar Soko in Fortitude Valley.
Two years later, sitting in circular booth in Azteca, his new restaurant at Queen’s Wharf, Ledingham cuts a much calmer figure. That’s in part because much of that opening stress is behind him, he says – a byproduct of being attached to such an era-defining project – but also because his Potentia Solutions Leisure restaurant group is now a larger and more well-oiled machine.
They’ve gotten better at openings because they had to, basically.
“This opening has been great, in that sense,” Ledingham says. “We’ve got people who are more experienced than when we first started, where I was on-site. I didn’t hire general managers at the beginning; I was there myself every day.”
Azteca opened on the weekend and is Potentia’s most well realised venue to date. The 126-seat design (with 40 seats outside overlooking the river) by Blackbox Design Co’s Ann Huntington, with its breeze blocks, mosaic tiles, heavy timber features and live hanging greenery, is striking and precise, the launch food and drinks menus well-realised.
The concept feels like an evolution on Soko, but this is a restaurant first, bar second, and it draws inspiration from various parts of Central and South America rather than just Peru.
“There are elements of Peru, Colombia, Argentina, Uruguay, but with touches of Asian spices and techniques with the food,” Ledingham says.
Chef Zac Sykes’ menu ranges across starters and snacks, entrees, larger plates and dishes to share.
For starters and entrees there’s yellowfin tuna tacos with kimchi carrot and Yarra Valley salmon roe; corn bread with spanner crab from Fraser Isle Spanner Crab with avocado, sour cream and caviar; bone marrow with braised kangaroo tail, yuca hash browns and a shiso chimichurri; and coral trout ceviche with buttermilk, cucumber, a lemon and yuzu puree, and dill oil.
Larger plates include Elgin Valley free-range half-chicken served with a dark chocolate mole sauce; 24-hour S. Kidman and Co four-score wagyu short rib served with sake, mirin, soy and Asian leaves; and line-caught coral trout with baby corn, spring onion, pickled onion and huitlacoche.
spiced mustard, tajin and Azteca hot sauce.Markus Ravik
To share, there’s butterflied 900-gram Rocky Point blue speckled grouper with cumin, lemon, garlic and parsley; pot-roasted South Australian lobster with chipotle, lime and coriander; and a dry-aged six-score King River wagyu bone-in sirloin with shiso chimichurri and aji mirasol.
For drinks, Jared Thibault (ex-Talisman Group, Ovolo and QT Hotels) has written a cocktail list with cachaca (a Brazilian spirit made from fermented sugar cane juice) as its cornerstone.
It fuels a caipirinha menu that ranges from a classic with sugar syrup and lime, to pomegranate and hibiscus, and watermelon and jalapeno numbers.
Elsewhere, signature cocktails include an Azteca take on an Old Fashioned (banana Bumbu rum, Fee Brothers Aztec chocolate bitters, macadamia demerara, orange twist, banana leaf), the Violeta Fizz (orange blossom gin, lime, lemon, orgeat, creme de violette, egg white, sparkling water, nigella flower) and the Smoking Guns (Illegal mezcal joven, yellow chartreuse, Luxardo maraschino, fresh lime, blackberry, rosemary, dried ice).
The wine list has been kept to a tight 60 bottles but dedicates plenty of space to drops from Argentina and Chile and Coravin by-the glass selections.
“We’ve opened five weeks behind schedule,” Ledingham says. “We could’ve opened last week, but I didn’t want to rush it.
“I think if we’d opened with the whole property we may have felt that extra pressure, 100 per cent. But now, I don’t think so. The pressure is still there to deliver the quality we want, but it’s to our standards, not feeling like people are looking over our shoulders.”
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-at-large at Broadsheet Brisbane, and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, the Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among many others.From our partners