New restaurant Henry Austin destined for former Chesser Cellars site

A NEW 200-seat restaurant and bottle shop is destined for one of the CBD’s most iconic restaurant sites — and it’ll include a completely different kind of takeaway service.

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THREE local food identities will breathe new life into Adelaide’s iconic Chesser Cellars site, four years after the restaurant closed down.

Renamed Henry Austin — the original name of the partly heritage-listed building — it will feature a 200-seat restaurant, takeaway area and bottle shop set to operate six days a week, from as early as June.

Max Mason, former venue manager of McLaren Vale’s Penny’s Hill winery, and Magill Estate Kitchen front of house Tess Footner have won the rent-free lease for the historic Chesser St site through a Renew Adelaide program. They will be joined by Bistro Dom head chef, Shane Wilson, who is leaving the Waymouth St restaurant for the project.

He will design a “modern Australian yum cha” menu, which will see waitstaff circulating tables with modern Australian style dishes of varying sizes and pricepoints.

Mr Mason, perhaps best known for his flamboyant hosting of Festival and Fringe events including Lola’s Pergola and Fear and Delight, said he had spent the past few years looking for the “best spot” in Adelaide to create a new food and wine destination.

“The very first time Tess and I saw inside the old Chesser Cellars, we couldn’t contain ourselves — the history and feeling of what’s within,” he said.

Chef Shane Wilson forages for his ingredients. Pic: Calum Robertson

“It is right smack-bang in the heart of the city. To be able to showcase the best of South Australian produce, with a brand-new space and a new concept was so exciting.

“Getting the go ahead from Renew Adelaide to proceed is a great privilege.”

The property is still subject to development approval with Adelaide City Council before renovation works can commence. However, Mr Mason said they planned to do “very little” to the building’s interior except to “brighten and bring it into a slightly more modern feel”.

Shane Wilson is similarly excited about the new project.

The talented 31-year-old chef, who always had big shoes to fill at Bistro Dom when larger-than-life personality Duncan Welgemoed passed over the reins two years ago, will finally have the chance to make his own mark.

NEW LIFE: Max Mason, proprietor of The Henry Austin (formerly Chesser Cellars) with his dog 'Pho Shizzle' and CEO of Renew Adelaide Lily Jacobs inside he old Chesser Cellars before the renovation. Pic: Tricia Watkinson

“It’s time for a new venture,” he said, conceding he’d been thinking about leaving Dom for a few months.

“Max spoke to me about the concept over a year ago. So when he approached me two months ago, I knew what it was about.”

That concept is to take the order-by-plate style of service of yum cha, and pair it with modern Australian, rather than Asian, cuisine.

“It’s almost like a different way of eating a degustation,” he said. “They’re all small deg-style dishes; some will probably be a bit larger … and desserts.”

As many as eight wait staff will roam the floor during peak service, Mr Mason says, and they will be trained by an acting coach “to make sure when the staff are selling dishes they can enthusiastically sell (them)”.

“I always talk about the theatre of hospitality and the fact that this is actually a stage,” he said.

Henry Austin’s takeaway area will offer four dishes daily — two hot and two cold. Takeaway menus will be emailed daily, with customers able to pick up their food in reusable tiffin tins — a kind of tiered lunch box — for which they would pay a deposit.

“It sounds like a very brave way of doing it but people are already taking food from a takeaway back to their desk ... so it is just one step beyond that,” Mr Mason said.

It won’t be the first time in the kitchen together for Mr Wilson and Ms Footner. The pair worked together at Mantra on King William, where he was sous chef and Ms Footner restaurant manager.

“I think she and Max together out the front will be a great team,” said Mr Wilson, who will finish up at Bistro Dom in coming weeks.

Renew Adelaide chief executive Lily Jacobs would not confirm the number of applications the site received, but said more than 40 groups inspected the property in February.

The building, which operated from 1964-2012 as Chesser Cellars, features a 10,000-bottle cellar in the basement, a split-level restaurant and commercial kitchen.