Shannon Kellam is smiling. It’s a relief.

The celebrated chef has been through more than most these past 12 months. Yet, standing at the pass at Herve’s Restaurant, dressed in a crisp blue RM Williams shirt, hand outstretched, he looks fresh and relaxed.

It was just 10 months ago that Kellam relinquished control of Montrachet, which he took from Brisbane favourite to one of Australia’s best-regarded French restaurants. Little more than a month before that, his mini-fiefdom of food businesses that operated under the BCN Events Group – including King Street Bakery in Bowen Hills, and Mica Brasserie and The Kneadery production kitchen in Newstead – had gone into liquidation.

It was harrowing both for Kellam and the Brisbane food and drink industry, with one of the city’s best chefs removed from the board. A combination of Covid and the 2022 floods had ultimately made the odds insurmountable for Kellam’s venues. Still, if it could happen to him, the local thinking went, it could happen to anyone.

Kellam is an old school hard nut, a Strathpine kid who in the 1990s caught the train into the city every day to cut his teeth working 16-hour shifts at Dennisons atop the Sheraton (now Sofitel) hotel. But you get the feeling he’s mellowed with age, and he’s thoughtful and upfront when you ask how he got from Montrachet to here, a culinary ambassador (read, consultancy) gig to rejig and refine Herve’s Restaurant.

Herve’s opened in Albion with a flourish in 2022 but has endured numerous personnel changes since, pulling the restaurant this way and that. It’s never really settled into a consistent groove.

“David and Eloise Lyons, and David Fraser: they’re the owners of Herve’s but they’re not from the industry. They have other professions,” Kellam says. “David [Lyons] was a great supporter of Montrachet for many years, and he reached out to me in January and said, ‘Look, would you consider coming along, having a look, and giving us some advice and a hand.’”

At the time, Kellam wasn’t really interested in stepping back into restaurants. He’d been working with aged care operators to help improve their kitchen operations, an experience he found rewarding (“sitting at the table having a meal at that stage of your life is a very important part of the day, so that was a cool way for me to contribute”). But he agreed to come and take a look.

“I could see things that were missing to bring the restaurant to fruition,” he says, “and that there was a fair lack of the kind of skills development that leaves a legacy for when you do have those changes in people and helps keep the ship steady.”

Walk into Herve’s and at first all will feel familiar. There’s still the same light-filled space of terrazzo countertops, textured walls, timber floors and banquette seating. But Kellam has a laser-focused eye for detail, and that’s where you’ll find the changes.

Most significantly, the restaurant’s kitchen has been completely rearranged with an oven, extra stoves and a salamander added to the open front line, along with shelving for equipment to give the chefs more room underneath the bench to rest their proteins.

“French bistro-style cooking has got to be quick out of the gates, and once the food order is taken it’s coming,” Kellam says. “It’s efficient. If diners want to slow down, that’s the waiter’s job to judge that. But you get that pace going, which gets the vibe in the dining room, and makes people want to come back more, spend more.

“The way the kitchen was designed prohibited that. There was a little charcoal cooker [out front] and how many steak frites can you cook on that when you’re doing two sittings? There was no pasta cooker … no oven, so the sections of the kitchen are running out to the back, and then running back out the front.”

He’s also replaced the standard Gastronorm fridges with drawer numbers to improve mis en place.

“It’s about keeping everything organised and clean and efficient so you can achieve those 100 covers.”

“The people you meet. Guests and clients become life-long friends. That’s what a restaurant does. That’s the way it is.”

Shannon Kellam

Running the kitchen day-to-day is Spanish-born Marco Valcarcel Alonso, he and French-trained Kellam having written a menu that’s Gallic at its heart, but crosses the Pyrenees into Basque Country Spain. Think dishes such as Rocky Point cobia pancetta with a celeriac remoulade, Spanish olive oil and charcoal lemon; sand crab soufflé with comte cheese and a pastis-seasoned bisque; and confit duck leg that’s been brined with juniper and clove, and served with braised vegetables and lentils.

Beyond Kellam and Alonso, there have been key additions to the front-of-house team, such as restaurant manager Anthony Folio, who has arrived from Tama Dining, and bar manager Brett Walsh, who local diners will recognise from previous roles at Baja Modern Mexican and Greca.

For Kellam, it feels like the perfect project at the perfect time. Ask him how he reflects now on losing Montrachet, and he pauses for a moment.

“It’s a hard one to answer clearly,” he says. “Because I don’t know, mate. I don’t know … I think it’s probably too fresh for me to answer it openly. This thing that was such a big part of your life. Your family revolves around it. Your whole life revolves around this restaurant.

“And the people you meet. Guests and clients become life-long friends. That’s what a restaurant does. That’s the way it is.

“I have memories of all that, but how I actually feel about it all, I don’t know. It’s just all locked away.”

You wonder, then with all that’s happened these past 12 months, is Shannon Kellam happy? Because, sitting here, listening to him talk about Herve’s, with typically vivid tangents into Montrachet or his two Bocuse d’Or finals appearances, he seems happy.

“I am happy, 100 per cent,” he says. “I think just getting some rest in that first month [after Montrachet], stepping outside that bubble that you were in every day, being on that train. It’s nonstop and if it stops, then it all stops – that’s how it felt. So I definitely feel refreshed and have a different focus on things.”