Tasting Australia: The top chefs embracing tiny restaurants
Bigger isn’t always better when it comes to restaurants. We profile a mix of chefs from Tasting Australia who have found cooking for less people can be more rewarding.
Lifestyle
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Justin James makes his way through the old church-turned-gallery, explaining over the scream of a belt-sander how he will make the impossible happen. From outside, the building’s towering roofline and arched windows still have the impact of a place of worship. Through the door, however, a crisscross skeleton of timber posts and beams is taking shape between its 150-year-old walls.
When it opens to the public as Restaurant Aptos in the next six months, James believes this will be an experience that is “one of one” – unlike anything else, not just in Australia, but globally. As he walks around, James describes the function and finer details of the different parts … the welcome lounge, the mirrored void, the stairs, the courtyard, the furniture, the artworks, the three kitchens, the 27 fridges and freezers. And how all this extraordinary space, all this work, all this equipment, all this expense, will be used to look after just 14 diners.
Restaurant Aptos might well be unique, as its celebrated chef and co-owner says, but it is not alone in wanting to reduce booking numbers. Indeed some, such as the four-seat Matsu in Melbourne, are much smaller. While economic considerations are often an important factor, the movement is also driven by a desire to give patrons a more intimate, interactive and sustainable experience.
Next month’s Tasting Australia food festival reflects this global trend. Other guests include the people behind small-scale eateries such as local hero Muni, Hobart’s Omotenashi and Greasy Zoes from Melbourne’s outskirts (Matsu’s Hansol Lee was part of it last year).
For James, putting a cap of 14 diners on each of two sittings a night at Aptos could be judged a risky play. This is the first business where he has put his own money on the line and, given the recent acclaim and top ranking for his reinvention of Restaurant Botanic, he certainly could be taking many more bookings.
However, he sees it as a natural progression, from 150 covers in his early years in New York at Eleven Madison Park, to 70 at Melbourne’s Vue de Monde and then 36 at Botanic. “In five years, I’ll be doing a restaurant with two guests – and still have 20 fridges,” he laughs.
In a more serious mood, he explains that the smaller numbers give him freedom to do things that wouldn’t otherwise be possible. “I’ve realised that what I want to deliver, and experience myself, is not just the food but the service, beverages … the whole package. If you can smash out a 300-seat dining room, that’s awesome, but that is a totally different beast.”
The package James has in mind for Aptos makes use of the entire property to create a “progressive dinner” that moves between three different spaces. He leads the way upstairs to an open room that takes full advantage of the scale and drama of the church’s dimensions. Here guests can move around a flexible arrangement of couches, occasional chairs and smaller tables while eating a succession of punchy snacks.
On the ground floor, we watch a mason in the final stages of repainting the original stone walls that will help make this “one of the coolest dining rooms around the country”.
Four tables of differing sizes will be made from slabs of 500-year-old French oak taken from the same tree and integrated with the kitchen. Plates served here will be hotter and more substantial.
A long-list of potential dishes features some of James’s favourite ingredients – kangaroo, marron, sea urchin – but “there’s no boundaries really”. Aged emu glazed with roasted bunya nut and finished with sea urchin and finger lime is one of the ideas he is playing with.
Finally, another climb leads to a more contemporary glass-walled box that sits among the swaying treetops. This will be the setting for a final succession of cleansers and dessert that will doubtless, given past experience, play with some ingredients normally regarded as savoury.
“These spaces have different personalities,” James says. “In the first you’ve got those high ceilings, downstairs with the stone walls is very churchlike. And here is more modern but with Mother Nature all around.”
This is where the meal ends but guests will be encouraged to stay longer, perhaps in a side courtyard where there will be a firepit, fruit orchard, birch trees (for their sap) and even a crop of barley to be used in producing beer.
Aptos is nothing if not ambitious and it will take time (and money) for the dream to be fully realised. James, however, says he is in for the long haul in a place he can truly call his own.
MUNI
When Mug Chen and Chia Wu opened Muni in Willunga three years ago, it was a casual wine bar seating up to 40 people. However, as the word began to spread about the amazing plates they were creating, people began travelling from the city and then interstate to dine there.
“They were coming all the way here to have this experience and we wanted to give them something more,” Chen says.
The pair both have more of a fine-dining background, particularly from their time at Vue de Monde in Melbourne, and realised this was their true passion. Muni now is very different.
Taking only 16 bookings at each sitting, it offers a single tasting menu that changes to a different theme with each season. Their last menu “Taiwan Tale” was an ode to Chen and Wu’s heritage expressed through the ingredients of their new home with dishes such as venison, morning glory, wild berry and beetroot. Muni will reopen in early May with a new concept.
Chen says one of the benefits of cooking for reduced numbers is working with small-scale family producers with a similar philosophy to themselves such as Braeburn Farm which will supply them 20 quails a week for the winter menu. And, with only four staff moving between the kitchen and the floor, there can be more interactions with diners.
“We want to give really intimate and very personalised service to everyone,” Chen says. “And we have come to realise that when we do 16 people we have the best balance.”
OMOTENASHI
Omotenashi began life as an idea for a pop-up event in a car showroom. Now the 10 seats at its kaiseki-style dinners are some of the most sought-after in Hobart. And, for chef and co-owner Lachlan Colwill, working in this intimate environment has helped rekindle his love for restaurants and cooking.
Colwill is originally from the Barossa Valley and best known in this state for his time leading the kitchen at the acclaimed Hentley Farm. When he and partner Sophie Pope moved to Tasmania in 2020, he was burnt out by the “hard survival mode” of restaurant life.
After a covid-enforced rest period, the pair stumbled on a job turning out wood oven pizzas in a regional diner, before moving to Hobart where they were approached to develop a plan for a space at the rear of a new Lexus dealership. Three years on, Omotenashi has won widespread acclaim for its melding of Japanese tradition and outstanding Tasmanian produce, particularly seafood. Cooking for limited numbers means he can source ingredients such as the seasonal fish supplied by a few chosen fishermen. “When it’s a small environment, the guest and the workers get that real close observation of how a restaurant runs,” he says. “We are observing how people react to the food and interact in the space, they’re observing very directly how you go about cooking. There’s real magic in that kind of hospitality.”
GREASY ZOES
When Zoe Birch and partner Lachlan Gardner took over an old fruit and veg store in the Victorian town of Hurstbridge, the locals found it hard to believe they could turn it into a restaurant. After all, the room inside this red-brick building only measured five by seven metres.
Into that tiny space they squeezed a kitchen, a bar and seating for eight people, opening the micro-restaurant they called Greasy Zoes almost eight years ago.
Greasy Zoes now offers a three-hour dining experience, with Birch cooking mostly on a wood grill in the kitchen and Gardner bringing out a steady stream of plates created from whatever produce was available that week from “hyper-local” producers.
“I couldn’t go back to the old way of menus that change every three months,” Birch says. “This is going to the farm and daily conversations. You are getting excited about stuff because the farmers are getting excited. We create food which is really personal and people seem to appreciate that.”
And, she says, food wastage is almost non-existent. “I know how many people are coming and their dietary requirements. At the end of the week, the fridge is empty. I’ve used everything and I start again the next week.”
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