He has a refill on the way for a “Simon vodka” which the waiter knowlingly acknowledges with a smile when Gloftis orders it.

The Gold Coast’s most respected restaurateur, who no longer has a venue in his home city since recently selling his pride and joy Greek eatery and bar Hellenika at Nobby Beach, is looking relaxed.

And so he should be - this five-star hotel pool and restaurant cabana is effectively his own backyard. Gloftis still has his Gold Coast home base but he has started living for the most part on site at The Calile.

It makes sense from a time-management point of view – on top of his new Hellenika at The Calile, he’s opening SK Steak and Oyster downstairs in the same trendy precinct next week.

“To be on site for any issues is amazing,” he says, adding with a laugh: “And as you can see, it’s a tough spot to live.”

Well-heeled hotel guests lounge around the pool, many looking like they just sashayed off the pages of a luxury travel brochure. At 39, he has come a fair way since he started 3 Beans espresso bar – a 24-hour joint popular with celebs and a hip crowd at the time – on Broadbeach’s Surf Parade when he was 21.

Hellenika at Nobby Beach followed later, launching 10 years ago with 18 staff. He built it up to the point where it had 65 on the roster and became a much-loved city favourite. Now Hellenika at The Calile has 115 staff on the books and for the first time in his life owning hospitality businesses he’s had to employ a human resources company.

It’s already award-winning, having been named Queensland Restaurant of the Year this year.

It has been a busy period for Gloftis who in July exited his contract as a partner in Star Gold Coast rooftop restaurant Nineteen before two weeks ago selling Hellenika to the crew behind Burleigh’s popular Justin Lane venue.

Gloftis reflects on his departure from the Gold Coast restaurant scene – “for the time being at least” – with a lot of nostalgia given he credits it as the city which not only made him but also helped iron out his kinks.

“The amount of mistakes I would have made there … the amount of people I would have annoyed … we weren’t experienced,” he recalls of his beginnings.

“For example, my bar tender filling up a champagne the same as a wine glass so just half a glass of champagne was going to a table, it’s just simple things that we just didn’t know.”

Humbly, he attributes his enduring success to the Hellenika restaurant launch manager Beth Clarke: “I was really lucky. She wasn’t my business partner but it would not have been such a success without her.

“She was restaurant manager, sommelier, floor manager, answering the phones. She did absolutely everything. She would make me look good. I would walk through the place and everyone would be thinking it’s running really smoothly because of me but it was her. It was Beth.

“Beth is the best thing that ever happened to me business wise. Hellenika still would have been a busy restaurant, but it would have just been a local taverna. She turned it into a restaurant, a place where people sit on the same table, get the service and she did that which I wouldn’t have done back then.”

Clarke, now a Sydney mother studying health science tells Eye Gloftis is being too generous with his praise and his passion for making sure customers were treated warmly and served up amazing food was key.

“Simon and my common dream was to put a restaurant on the Gold Coast that would rival Melbourne and Sydney – and we did it. From day one we had full houses. It really felt like we were doing New Year’s Eve every night, over and over. Simon wears his heart on his sleeve in terms of his passion and so do I, which is where we gelled well.

“It was seven years of my life, I was working 75 hours a week, pretty much single and went to bed writing lists, woke up writing lists and emailing – Hellenika was my life and I loved it.”

Gloftis acknowledges he could not have progressed to where he has - with the respect his name and operations command - without Gold Coasters warming to his venues.

Hellenika was a place for celebration and commiseration: Gloftis says among his memories are tables booked by people to announce a pregnancy and also to reveal a cancer diagnosis.

He remembers one elderly regular whose wife was sick with cancer and always asked for takeaway on departure.

“One day I offered him something and he said ‘No, don’t give it to me, she won’t be there when I get home’ and we had a bit of a cry together. The livelihoods, things that have changed because of Hellenika, I had a head chef and manager meet there and get married – I actually walked her down the aisle in Spain.

“Hellenika has a lot of stories,” he says.

He fondly recalls a young female staffer feeling comfortable enough to give him a serve verbally one day: “I had a staff member say ‘Simon I think you are an absolute f--king wanker’. Just like that ... Kiwi girl from Palmerston North.”

He recalls the incident with a laugh, believing such frankness is key to a successful operation: “I reckon if you are close enough to people that’s when you can say those things, that’s when a business thrives. For her to say that and know she was not going to get fired, I love that. And I probably did something stupid, I don’t know.

“I’d rather that than someone scared and walking on egg shells. Tell me the truth, tell me where the cracks are and where we need to improve.”

He pauses and reflects cheerily that they still get on today, saying they have since caught up overseas: “I went and stayed at her house a few years ago.

“The Gold Coast is the best thing that has ever happened to me and hardest place in the world to have a hospitality business and be treated seriously. You cannot be treated seriously there for the life of you.”

His credits are impressive and varied, with the success of one leading to the next thing: the aforementioned 3 Beans was followed by Little Beans at Nobby: “The first day I opened it up and opened the roller door there were all these people and I thought ‘there must have been a car accident’.

“But they were coming to see me on my first day at 6am. It was unbelievable. I didn’t think that would have happened to me. But Nobby needed a cafe, a lot of my previous crowd was from that area but used to come to Broadbeach.

“It was the perfect storm. But if I was doing that in Sydney or Melbourne I’d have been no chance. What, pick a suburb in the middle of nowhere?”

At The Calile, he is interrupted frequently by diners. People want to shake his hand, line up a drink or lunch, meet the guy who makes the magic happen.

It’s all part of the job.

“People don’t want to be best friends with you but they want to know the owner knows they are there. So even walking down the street you see people you are looking after all day, every day. It is hard, it’s an all-consuming industry but I absolutely love it.”

Right now while he’s sipping on a “Simon vodka” he doesn’t seem too stressed at all but then he outlines what a typical day looked like when he had multiple Gold Coast venues on the go: “I would wake up in the morning and looking at profit-and-loss reports from night before – and then I would try and go for a walk or try and do something … to get out and about. Then the business day starts. When normal 9-5 people were doing their business day – my accountants, lawyers, employment issues, dealing with suppliers – you have to be around, or at least available. Then I’d try and go home in the afternoon to try and get a bit of a lay down or kick back on the couch for two seconds and then when everyone finishes their day you put your uniform on and go to work.”

It is a big part of the reason he has, in his words, closed “the doors on my Gold Coast restaurant journey”.

His sale of Hellenika at Nobby Beach – understood to be a multimillion-dollar deal – comes just months after he exited as a partner in the Nineteen rooftop restaurant he helped set up in Star Gold Coast’s The Darling tower.

“The reason for me to get out was literally it’s time,” he says, adding there were “small cracks” in the way things were being done at Hellenika Gold Coast “that I couldn’t putty over because I was here”.

“I went ‘You know what, I’m going to be move on’. I can’t allow Hellenika to do that. I can’t. To make it run how I want it to I would have to be there five nights a week shaking the hands, shouting the desserts and doing the little things that a restaurateur does
and I knew I couldn’t do it.”

He’s taking some of his key staff with him for the Brisbane ride.

His Nineteen head chef Kelvin Andrews has a stake in the new SK Steak and Oyster venture, whilst his longtime Hellenika manager Theo Kampolis has a slice of both Hellenika at The Calile and SK Steak and Oyster. Kampolis, an ever-smiling presence, started at Hellenika at Nobby as a food runner, eight years ago just months after his arrival on the Gold Coast from Greece and when he spoke little English.

From there he took English lessons and worked his way up to waiter, then floor manager, then eventually venue manager, and becoming a trusted lieutenant in the burgeoning Gloftis empire.

Now he has moved with his wife and child to Brisbane excited about the big-city adventure that awaits.

“Simon gave me the chance and that is the most important thing for me, he let me prove what I can do,” Kampolis says.

“When you are far away from home you need a home – and Hellenika was home, and Simon Gloftis with his family was my family.”

Gloftis says he won’t discount the possibility of returning to the Gold Coast with a business in the future but for now the big city beckons and potentially long term something overseas is a twinkle in his eye.

“One day it would be nice (to return). My home is there – but right now I’m going to concentrate here on making these work properly.

“But I hope I made a positive impact in hospitality on the Gold Coast and in my staff’s lives. I hope there are people who take that experience and go further with it, take it to the next level.

“At the time I had my cafes they would have been the best cafes on the Gold Coast but now they would just be mediocre. People have taken cafes to the next level.

“Hopefully in five to 10 years I’ll look back and go ‘Oh my, these new restaurants have just smashed it and blow me out of the water and I wouldn’t be able to compete now’.”