Fine dining tones it down as business reality bites
Call it accessible. Call it flexible. Just don't call it cheap.
Like never before, famous and highly trained chefs are abandoning the reverence and starched formality of their traditional forum for formats better suited to changing diner preferences.
Some call it dumbing down; others, redefining the product.
But with reaffirmation last week that traditional and expensive restaurants are in trouble - in Brisbane, Phillip Johnson's One Eleven and Simon Hill's lauded Ortiga announced final drinks - chefs who are also businesspeople are re-examining the business model they always assumed would work.
Latest to cast off the shackles of formality? Chui Lee Luk, the lawyer-turned-chef who ran Sydney fine-dining institution Claude's until earlier this year when she shocked diners by conceding the formal dining room's days were over. She bought a vacant site that had been Bentley Bar, in Surry Hills, and set about creating Chow Bar, a "Chinese eating and drinking den".
Chris Lucas, owner of Chin Chin on Flinders Lane in Melbourne, says Gen Y diners were attracted to the non-traditional restaurant model.
Not a single lobe of foie gras to be seen. It's an all-day, every-day, high-volume, low-margin interpretation of the chef's Malaysian-Chinese roots. Like most restaurateurs, she hopes to create an environment in which a party atmosphere is conducive to drink sales.
"Claude's for me, well, I could make money out of it, and it was a creative indulgence, but times have changed," Luk, 43, said.
"Here we're trying to pump things out because that's what the market demands of a Chinese restaurant.
"What I'm trying to manage is the same complexity of flavours but less fuss on the plate."
However, a lot of chefs from a fine-dining background carry too much of their "fussiness" with them into casual ventures, she believes.
According to Victorian hospitality industry doyenne Alla Wolf-Tasker, "cooking with one hand behind your back" has important implications for the industry.
"For an industry on its knees because of skills shortages, when we begin losing some of our best trainer chefs to levels of cooking that do not even begin to test their skills, it's clear that we will also be losing those kitchens that in the past have been critical hotbeds of training for emerging young talent," Wolf-Tasker said.
"In terms of sustainable culinary tourism, countries and cities selling a serious food culture need to be able to deliver at all levels."
Demographers tell us Gen Y is bent on lifestyle rather than commitment to long-term traditional goals, such as home ownership and family, and according to Melbourne restaurateur Chris Lucas, this attitude has lanced a traditional restaurant model requiring bookings, pre-determined eating times and an expectation of a certain spend.
His response has been the successful Chin Chin, with no bookings, no set "service" times, a kitchen that stays open until 1am and a low-spend approach. He claims his restaurant does 6500-7000 "covers" weekly. "Gen Y doesn't want to be told how to spend on eating and drinking," Lucas said.
Going Casual
Khan Danis and wife Catherine Adams, both formerly senior chefs within Neil Perry’s Rockpool Group, now run Cipro, a pizza-by-the-slice restaurant in Alexandria, Sydney.
In Brisbane, one of the city’s best known creative chefs, former Urbane executive Kym Machin, set up Bare Bones Society earlier this year, a stylish suburban cafe doing simple family food.
Kiwi Warren Turnbull, who made his reputation at Bank and then his own Surry Hills fine diner Assiette in Sydney, turned the place into a burger joint, Chur Burger, earlier this year and hasn’t looked back.
Another Rockpool alumnus, former executive chef Mike McEnearney, set up the remarkably successful canteen Kitchen By Mike in Sydney’s Rosebery, a place for salad and grilled chicken.
Justin North, who built the collapsed Becasse group, now consults to various businesses including The Burger Shed in Sydney’s Mosman, based on his experience with Charlie & Co, the burger business he lost in the spectacular 2012 collapse of his various restaurant companies.
Chef Orazio D'Elia, who put Rushcutters Bay’s Popolo on the map, will move down to Bondi Beach from a senior position at Icebergs Dining Room, opening Da Orazio Pizza and Porchetta in November.
Source: The Australian,
