Curtains up: drama makes way for dining at Peter Gilmore’s Bennelong
Peter Gilmore prepares for the opening of the Bennelong restaurant at the Sydney Opera House. ‘There’s definitely good adrenaline flowing,’ he says. Picture: Renee Nowytarger Source: News Corp Australia
Just another restaurant opening? Not quite.
On Wednesday, a year and a half since the last plate of barramundi was served at Australia’s most prestigious restaurant site, a new tenant opens the doors at Sydney Opera House.
It ends an 18-month rent-free emptiness at the awe-inspiring Bennelong site that saw incumbent Guillaume Brahimi leave, a successful tenderer withdraw and another sign up for the project of a lifetime after another lengthy tender process. Three million dollars later, and with celebrated chef Peter Gilmore, of Quay, at the helm, Bennelong opens with more eyes on it than any diva the Opera House will ever host.
Sydney Opera House chief executive Louise Herron, in whose hands the sensitive business of finding the right operator for a Bennelong restaurant has been held, said: “This is the great Australian restaurant that the Opera House needed. That’s what everyone told us was needed. And what amazed me was how much people cared.”
It’s estimated that having the restaurant space at Bennelong empty since new year’s eve 2013 has cost the Opera House as much as $1.5m in lost rent. But talking-up operators the Fink Group and their new Bennelong restaurant yesterday, Ms Herron was sanguine.
“There are things you can control and things you can’t control, and we’re really pleased with the outcome,” she said.
The new restaurant, she said, answered all the criteria set out by the original request for tender, from food and wine, design, catering for diverse audiences to utilisation of the space and the financial resources of the operator. “One of the things that’s most amazing about it is how they’ve managed to use all of the different spaces within this marvellous cathedral-like thing,” she said. “Is it a better use of the space? Yes, it is. It’s far more diverse.”
While diplomatically avoiding criticism of Brahimi, whose food built on a French core, Herron suggested a changing and developing Australian food culture had made a more parochial focus inevitable.
“People tell me it (the Opera House) is the symbol of Australia,” Ms Herron said. “Well, we needed a restaurant that was the symbol of Australia. Rather than being dissatisfied with what was there before … I think we have a very clear mission about excellence, ambition and breadth, and this is what this solution does. It answers the brief.”
The new restaurant will essentially consist of a dining room where a three-course, set-price menu operates, a less formal food bar for raw and cured products, and a wine bar, all at different levels.
Creating Bennelong within the heritage guidelines of the Opera House has meant working within the Utzon Design Principles, set out by Opera House architect Jorn Utzon and now interpreted by the trust’s eminent architects panel. It puts serious handcuffs on what a tenant can and cannot do with the space. “But one of the Utzon principles is that things need to change,” Ms Herron said, “so it has been a matter of finding the change that is compatible with the original vision.”
The Fink Group — behind some of Sydney’s best restaurants (Quay, Bridge Room, Firedoor, Otto) — has put Gilmore in charge of the food with a brief to celebrate Australia. He said 98 per cent of what the kitchen would use was sourced from Australian suppliers. “Being able to support great Aussie farmers and great producers is definitely my big agenda here,” Gilmore said.
His “dream” kitchen, built from scratch and with views to the Harbour Bridge, cost about $1.3m to build and equip. And with 33 kitchen staff, 40 front-of-house/bar, plus eight in the office, Bennelong employs close to 80.
“I’m not nervous, but there’s definitely good adrenaline flowing,” is how Gilmore described emotions yesterday.
And Bennelong’s “snow egg”, the dish that made Gilmore, and Quay, famous on television’s MasterChef? Gilmore predicts his version of a “cherry jam lamington” may just be it. Just don’t expect nanna’s lamington, he said.
Source: The Australian - 27th June 2015
