Neil Perry - ready to take Dubai by storm
Neil Perry’s first overseas Spice Temple will launch in Dubai in early 2015.
AS we told you a month ago, Neil Perry is set to take his caravan to Dubai in a joint venture with local developers that will see his first overseas Spice Temple launched in the United Arab Emirates early next year. “(I) can’t say who yet but they are developers and we are operators,” Perry tells us from Los Angeles. “We are just getting the staff together, but it looks like as many as 20 will be coming with me to open Dubai. It’s a very strong team and in our tradition, we want to take the city by storm.” We understand the location to be Dubai’s Hotel Kempinski at the Mall of Emirates. Not surprisingly for a city where excess is the norm, we’re told that while the restaurant’s style will reflect the same modern, regional Chinese theme as its Melbourne and Sydney siblings, “sophistication will be taken to a whole new level”. Perry will join Melburnian Greg Malouf, who is due to open in Dubai later this year.
Melbourne’s Charlie Dumpling, open less than six months in hectic Prahran and winning friends for Dylan Roberts’s terrific mod-Asian food, is already looking at cloning itself. We understand the business partnership behind CD is close to signing on two sites in Melbourne’s CBD. “We’re potentially looking at two junior sites, correct,” Roberts confirms.
RUMOURS of Garagistes’ imminent passing are way off the mark, according to chef and partner of the renowned Hobart restaurant, Luke Burgess. “The restaurant is still for sale, and that’s where it remains,” he says. “We have a lease until mid next year and the option of a six-month extension after that.” So Hobart’s edgiest restaurant is still alive and kicking, and any suggestion the partners plan to walk within months “is completely wrong”.
THEY’VE created a monster. Or Monster, to be more accurate. At Canberra’s sexy, newish Hotel Hotel, an 11th-hour name change has meant dumping Godzilla as moniker for the hotel’s new restaurant and adopting Monster. Seems someone had prior claim to the fabled Japanese creature’s name. “We were advised by our lawyers to change the name,” says Sean McConnell, “to avoid copyright infringement.” Monster starts its second week today. “It was a huge opening week,” says the chef.
IN the food-centric regional Victorian town of Kyneton, chef Damian Sandercock has commenced a massive expansion of his Piper Street Food business that will see a brand new sourdough bakery, butcher’s kitchen, cafe/picnic shop and cooking school. “We hope this will be a seven-days-a-week destination,” says Sandercock, whose employees include the once high-profile Melbourne chef (Luxe, Verge) Karen White.
IN the throes of Australian Bacon Week — a promotion not only for selling the product but to draw attention to the amount of imported bacon landing here — an ACT smallgoods maker has been credited with producing Australia’s best artisan bacon. Pialligo Farm Smokehouse Full Rasher Smoked and Dry Cured Bacon — it wins no awards for snappy branding — is officially home to our best bacon. In the category of nationally available, the winner was Bertocchi’s Hickory Smoked Pan Size Bacon.
Source: The Australian - 24th June 2014
