Restaurant explosion in the south
Hobart is in the grip of a rare explosion of new eating.
With paint barely dry, partners Chris Chapple and chef Matt Breen have hatched the small but delightful Templo on the city’s outskirts, the kind of affordable Eurocentric bistro most of us would love to call our local. Both have solid backgrounds; the result is something special. Nearby, in premises many will remember as Garagistes, brothers George and Sava Kakkos, with partner and pastry chef Pavlos Zacharioudakis, are creating urban Greek from the award-winning space of the defunct restaurant. The Kakkos family has been in Hobart restaurants for years; George has retired temporarily from his career as a radiologist in Europe to get his dream of a modern Greek up in his home town. Greek-born head chef Vissarion Batras will move down from Melbourne (of course). It opens November 15.
Closer to the tourist hub of the Salamanca precinct, Cheryl and Naser Daci, of bakery Daci & Daci, have taken Iberia as their muse for the newly opened Black Footed Pig, a tapas house with very favourable early reports. The proprietors of established eateries Smolt and Frank plan a new cafe/community restaurant and production kitchen in West Hobart. Smolt Kitchen will be a seven-day, all-day affair, with a planned December opening. Meanwhile Hobart’s most talked about new project, Aloft, begins its “family and friends” program this week on the Brooke Street Pier. With a raft of investors, hands-on partners Glen Byrnes and Christian Ryan will cook while Heiki Stanley manages. All have runs on the board, boding well for what may be Hobart’s Quay (the waterfront panoramas are special). “We found this spot and we just knew we had to have it,” Ryan says of the timber-lined loft above Glass House restaurant. “We pulled as many strings as we could.” The pair met at Melbourne’s Taxi and plan an antipodean version of Asian flavours, using ingredients grown locally, inspired by Thailand, Korea and Japan. Stanley’s skills have been honed at Moorilla’s the Source and Pilgrim Coffee. Ryan, a Taswegian, has worked with the likes of James Henry (Bones, Paris) at Peppermint Bay and the Ramsay Group in London, and Byrnes’s impressive career includes a brief time as co-head chef of Melbourne’s late, lamented Alevansi with Matt Wilkinson. Byrnes is a DIY devotee and, as a former Garagistes chef, quite the fan of the foraged and found. Their very lovely restaurant most definitely will be one to watch next year.
And in Liverpool Street, Hobart, Standard Burgers/Pilgrim Coffee’s Will Priestleyis building a bar, Standard Drinks, alongside his brilliant old sandstone cafe. Standard presently is takeaway only. Drinks should open by New Year.
Adelaide’s Ayhan Erkoc has been below the radar since his progressive but flawed Gouger Street restaurant Celsius ploughed under earlier this year. He has been cooking at Byron Bay in northern NSW at a restaurant co-owned by Fink Group but is to step on to a bigger stage. His former colleague at Magill Estate — chef turned restaurateur Luke Stepsys — has appointed Erkoc head chef at Collingwood restaurant Panama. “I’ve got a great team in place and now I have someone I think can lead that team,” Stepsys says.
An iconic (yes, the word actually works) corner hotel in Adelaide’s East End, the Stag, has reopened with a veteran chef at the helm of its new restaurant. Camillo Crugnale, known to most Adelaideans as the man behind the food at Assaggio restaurant (and its Central Markets outlet), has resurfaced at the helm of the Vardon, the dining space of the Victorian-era pub on the corner of Rundle Street and East Terrace. The pub closed earlier this year after operators got into financial trouble; a new consortium has taken on the lease. It includes Adelaide businessman Philip Speakman, hospitality veteran Chris Kenny and Melbourne hotelier Dean Grant(the Elephant & Wheelbarrow, European Bier Cafe). Adelaide heritage architecture firm DASH has done the interiors. Crugnale, who sold out of Assaggio in April after more than 10 years, has put together a non-denominational CBD menu with entrees at about the $18 mark and mains $30 plus.
Fresh-ish from a recent week in Bangkok, First Bite is quivering like a kanom jin noodle over the imminent launch in December of Long Chim, in Perth’s State Buildings on St George’s Terrace. Bangkok-based Australian Thai guru David Thompson relocates to the west getting this, his second Long Chim (after Singapore), off the ground. Unlike the high-end Nahm, Long Chim is all about Bangkok’s vibrant street and market foods. The Singapore progenitor is a blast and the second incarnation promises to set new benchmarks for Thai food in Perth.
Source: The Australian, John Lethlean, 27th October 2015
Originally published as: Restaurant explosion in the south
