The group of around 20 men, aged in their forties, fifties and sixties, are big names.

But Baturo, one of Brisbane’s most respected restaurateurs, isn’t sharing them.

That’s all in the vault, along with the conversations these guys have in their self-titled Breakfast Creek Athletics Club.

Even in the bitter depths of winter they meet, at 5.30am at the Mercedes-Benz complex in Newstead before embarking on a one-hour walk along the river to New Farm and back, “just talking about shit”.

For Baturo, 53, who lives in Samford with wife Jaimee Pickles and teenage daughters Rosie and Arlo, it’s a highlight of a hectic week that includes running five venues, and soon a sixth and possibly seventh.

The club is selective – you have to be invited and if you don’t make the first three meets, you’re out – but Baturo says it’s the closest he’s come to team sport since attending Marist Brothers Ashgrove in the 1980s.

“We get a new perspective on stuff we’re all going through and it’s very much a cone of silence – we’re just a group of guys coming together at a time in our lives when mental health and building connection is crucial,” he says.

Put it this way, it’s a far more sensible reason to be up at 4.30am than might have been the case when Baturo was a carefree bachelor cutting his teeth in the hospitality game.

Ditching a law degree at Griffith University at 21, he became the youngest manager of Friday’s bar in Eagle Street after being “seduced by the charismatic and crazy people” he met there.

Baturo is not sure his parents – Polish immigrant Jerzy (George), a civil engineer, and Annette (nee Tudman), a Miss Wide Bay Burnett pageant winner who went on to become a mathematics professor – were thrilled but they didn’t say anything.

Neither did his sister Camille, who followed him into hospitality, opening an Italian noshery in Bangalow with husband Peter Timbs, one of the first contestants on reality TV show Big Brother. (They now have a hardware store in Lismore).

Baturo moved to Sydney in the late 1990s when a mate asked him to open a restaurant called Joe Diamonds.

“It really struck chord, we were on Wentworth Avenue, and the girls from Cleo (magazine) would come in, and Heidi (Middleton, now married to Queensland property tycoon Michael Malouf) and Sarah-Jane (Clarke, of Sass & Bide) and the Ksubi (jeans) guys when they were just starting out,” he recalls.

Those were heady days, and in 2001 Baturo was invited to enter the Cleo Bachelor of the Year. He was one of 50, along with cricketer Brett Lee, shock-jock Kyle Sanderlands and swimmer Geoff Huegill.

“I like to say I came fourth – with 46 others,” he smiles. “They only had first, second and third, and the winner was a dolphin trainer from Sea World (David Whitehill, now a TV personality). How can you compete with that, you’re good looking AND you train dolphins? Come on.”

But did it make Baturo more popular with the ladies?

“Not really,” he laughs. “There was a lunch to mark the event and one bachelor per table of 10 ladies, and I remember sitting down and the girls kind of looked at me and went, ‘why are YOU sitting down?’ – I think they were all disappointed.

“It was a very Sydney experience but a lot of fun … back when I had hair.”

There is nothing remotely Sydney about our lunch today.

We’re sitting on the terrace of Baturo’s Tillerman restaurant in Eagle Street, overlooking the Story Bridge and shimmering Brisbane River.

Relaxing as it is, I’m fighting the impulse to get up and dance.

The background music is my era – and Baturo’s, he compiled the playlist – featuring ’70s and ’80s hits like Abba’s When I Kissed the Teacher and Spandau Ballet’s Only When You Leave.

Some of his younger staff don’t know them, but plenty of patrons do, eating and singing along at the same time. It’s the vibe.

Today, Baturo is particularly excited. He’s just done a menu tasting for Naldham House, his latest venture with DAP & Co, which opens this month.

He’s the A in the partnership, along with Denis Sheahan, whose Greenfield Events runs Splendour in the Grass and Falls Festival, and Paul Piticco, who promotes Splendour and famously managed Powderfinger.

They also have Popolo Italian restaurant at South Bank, The Gresham Bar in Queen Street and Walter’s Steakhouse and Wine Bar in Edward Street.

Baturo still owns the French-Vietnamese restaurant Libertine he opened on Petrie Terrace when returning from Sydney in 2009, and is looking to reopen Naga Thai, demolished in 2022 in Dexus’s $2.1bn redevelopment of Eagle Street Pier.

But hey, no hard feelings. It was Dexus, Australia’s largest office landlord, which asked DAP & Co to take on the heritage-listed Naldham House, vacant since the Brisbane Polo Club left in 2015.

“It fell in our lap,” Baturo says, over a perfectly charred Sir Thomas Angus flat iron, an oyster blade cut with a marble score of 4-5 (which he naturally rates a 10/10).

“I was doing Naga with Dexus then Covid hit and the original tenant couldn’t continue,” he explains.

Naldham House will have a brasserie, French-themed cocktail lounge and premium restaurant and, to Baturo’s delight, its function space has already been booked “sight unseen” for weddings.

He points to home-grown confidence in the hospitality scene, bolstered by “international staff with unbelievable pedigrees”, but warns the future is not assured.

“A bit of maturity has to come – we have to look at cities that are doing well, like New York and Hong Kong; it’s no coincidence these big financial hubs have a boisterous nightlife; one begets the other,” he says.

“Brisbane has become over-regulated. It’s very difficult when you feel like you can’t do anything without breaking the rules. In other cities, you are treated like an adult and there is less monitoring.”

Baturo is specifically referring to the Palaszczuk Government’s snap changes to liquor licensing laws and trading hours in 2016 and the compulsory use of ID scanners in 2017 in ‘safe night precincts’.

The moves came after the one-punch attack that killed 18-year-old Cole Miller in Fortitude Valley.

“What happened to Cole Miller was just terrible, we all feel that, it could have been one of our sons or daughters,” Baturo says.

“But the total industry was almost shut down. It was a quick, one-size-fits-all approach that didn’t take into account a business’s good trading history.

“The best thing a precinct can be is busy – shit doesn’t happen in a busy precinct.”

Throwing forward to 2032, Baturo says Brisbane can shine or look archaic.

“I would like to think when the Olympics come and a group of 50-year-old tourists want to go to a bar after 10 o’clock at night, they won’t have to bring their passports out or be refused entry,” he says.

“I’m advocating for a level playing field with Sydney and Melbourne – scanners are voluntary in Sydney, they dumped lock-out laws in 2019, and Melbourne trialled them for three months before saying, ‘whoa, this is not working’.

“Why does Brisbane have to adopt worst practice, not best practice?”

Baturo is a member of Brisbane City Council’s Nighttime Economy Advisory Group and says Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner is a “big supporter of a vibrant and safe 24-hour economy”.

Cr Schrinner has called for an overhaul of the lockout laws and ID scanning rules, while Premier Steven Miles is considering appointing a night commissioner to work with industry and government.

“We need to get a move on,” says Baturo, who never set out to be an industry spokesperson.

“With COVID, I wanted to be involved in making the industry energetic and busy again, not just for me but for my kids.”

Baturo is every bit the doting dad and loving husband.

He met Jaimee in Sydney in 2002 when they were managing different Wagamama Japanese restaurants.

“Initially, she didn’t like me very much; I was cheeky, and maybe I had a touch of arrogance,” he laughs.

“She was such a better manager than I was, incredibly patient and empathetic but also very effective, and to be honest, I didn’t think she would ever think of me in that (romantic) way because she was too sensible.

“She’s beautiful, intelligent and a big influence in my life. She could have gone a lot further in her career but her stepping back and looking after the kids has allowed me to have my dream. That’s a huge sacrifice.”

Three years ago, their youngest child Arlo, now 14, changed her name.

“We called her Lola, but she felt it was important to have her own identity, and being diagnosed with autism at age seven was part of that.

“The confidence it took for her to do that, and to see it through, showed real resilience and grit and I’m really proud of her.

“I was a bit surprised at first, and would constantly call her Lola by mistake, but she would ignore me or spray me with a water gun, like you do to a naughty cat or dog.

“I wouldn’t get away with it every now and then, I would get away with it never,” he laughs.

Baturo says the best thing a parent can give a child is unconditional love.

“You can’t have a confident kid without it. We didn’t smack our kids, we just loved the shit out of them.

“I tell Rosie (16) and Arlo – everything in my life before I had kids was in black in white, and everything after seemed like this burst of technicolour.

“It took me a while to realise how important it was that they saw me in a certain way, so as I’ve got older I’ve cut back on drinking.

“I’ve learned to cope with stress and do a lot of exercise – boxing, surfing, golf; I’m a good tennis player, and I used to play a bit of squash back when it was cool, which was never.”

And then, of course, there’s the mighty Breakfast Creek Athletics Club.

DETAILS

Tillerman Seafood Restaurant, 71 Eagle St, Brisbane

Steak: Sir Thomas Angus Flat Iron MB4-5

Rating: 10