Set for a taste of southern charm
Chef Morgan McGlone, who is about to open a diner in Fitzroy with Aaron Turner, named Belle’s. Source: News Limited
SO you thought Nashville was just about music? Aussie chefs (although to be fair, one’s a charming Kiwi) Morgan McGlone and Aaron Turner are about to launch their vision of Nashville spicy fried chicken and fish in Fitzroy’s Gertrude Street with a diner named Belle’s.
Turner, who used to run the acclaimed Loam restaurant, has been in the US for a year and will continue to live there. He’s been cooking at Husk in Nashville, owned by the acclaimed chef Sean Brock. McGlone, who was a Luke Mangan lieutenant in Sydney before going to the US years ago, will be hands on at what they’re calling “a Nashville hot chicken and natural wine bar”. Expect spicy fried proteins with beans, potato salad and — if they can find them in Australia — collard greens. There may be southern whisky involved, too. While McGlone will run the kitchen, Turner will be back for only six weeks before returning to Nashville, where he has “a project under way”. McGlone also has plans for something in LA. “Aaron and I will to-and-fro, but there will always be one of us here.”
SYDNEY: Need more convincing of the US influence on our food scene? Take a look at Merivale Group’s massive project at the Coogee Pavilion in Sydney. Cuban-American chef Danielle Alvarez, who joined the company from Chez Panisse in San Francisco, will be running the breakfast menu at Coogee until her Merivale restaurant in Paddington is launched next year. And Australian chef Jordan Toft has come home from many years in LA, where he’s been head chef at The Eveleigh, to be Coogee’s executive chef. He’ll get his own space at the Pavilion next year. Coogee Pav stage one opens in two weeks with a pizzeria, juice bar and seafood cafe.
MELBOURNE: In a world of celebrity chefs, the craft of the restaurateur often gets overshadowed. So it is that we salute another Melbourne restaurateur this week who clocked up 20 years. Matteo Pignatelli opened his eponymous North Fitzroy restaurant in 1994, taking over premises that already had a few pages in the history of Melbourne dining: the one-time Mietta’s. Pignatelli bought it as a pizzeria with his wife, Franca, cooking Italian food. There have been several chefs and landlords over the years, but it has always been a switched-on restaurant with a well-informed operator. A glass of Prosecco is in order.
MELBOURNE: Take a dash of Supernormal. Throw in a good splash of Chin Chin and another of Coda. Season with Gingerboy, and whatayagot? Into the hotly contested CBD Melbourne pan-Asian paradise steps Lucy Liu this Friday. Michael Lambie lieutenant Zac Cribbes will be head chef. First Bite took a quick look as builders were completing the massive refit of what was once PM 24. A key structural change has been to create the restaurant’s entrance from Oliver Lane.
MELBOURNE: It’s a senior staff clean-out at Melbourne’s The Point since Chengcheng (Aust) Enterprise Melbourne Pty Ltd bought the restaurant a few months ago. First executive chef Justin Wise decamped. Now general manager Bryan Lloyd has also packed his bags. Lloyd made a reputation as the fastidious British maitre d’ at Vue de Monde for many years. Wise is planning menus, kitchen and staff for his first client as a consultant, Meatmother, which has taken over the former Little Hunter premises in Melbourne. “Yes, it’s going to be a specialty American smokehouse restaurant,” says Wise, “but the menu needs to be a lot broader than (Richmond’s) Meatmother.”
Source: The Australian - 8th July 2014
