Previous SlideNext Slide

Melbourne has a spectacular new bakery and all-day restaurant with the opening of Antara 128 in the city. The multipurpose venue is by the Windsor Melbourne hospitality group, which also owns modern Asian eateries Sunda and Aru, waste-focused bar Parcs (which reopens on October 17) and gluten-free bakery Kudo.

Antara has a discreet sliding door entrance, but upon entry the project is revealed as striking and bold. A bakery counter gives onto a large partitioned dining room with counter seating that looks into a huge open kitchen with a wood-fired stove and bread-baking ovens.

At the rear of the cavernous space, a dough production kitchen can be seen through a windowed mezzanine. Unfinished concrete is softened by timber and leather details, but the operation feels like a production space: diners are witnesses to work.

Head baker Didiet Radityawan has been nurturing his sourdough starter for eight years while working at social enterprise Streat and Moorabbin’s Penny for Pound.

His bread range includes a “city loaf” in two sizes. “A lot of bakeries have a country loaf, but we’re in the middle of the city, so we’re doing things differently,” he says.

“We have a regular 800-gram loaf and a smaller 600-gram loaf that suits people in apartments. We’ll bake bread in the morning and the afternoon so people can walk by after work, grab a fresh loaf, and have nice, warm bread for dinner.”

Local artisan products, such as flour from Tuerong Farm on the Mornington Peninsula and Lard Ass butter from the Bellarine Peninsula, are used in the bread and viennoiserie. “It’s a privilege to use all the best ingredients, and the equipment is the best you can get for a bakery,” says Radityawan.

Head chef Allan Doert Eccles was the opening chef at Gimlet, and held the same role at fire-focused Embla. He’s moved from Jayden Ong Winery in Healesville to take on this role.

“Antara feels like a very Melbourne restaurant,” he says. “It’s that all-day eating and all-day action. It’s an awesome offering for the CBD, a bit industrial and raw. There’s nowhere in the city that bakes bread like this.”

‘Antara is modern Melbourne to me, and I feel really proud about that.’

Head chef Allan Doert Eccles

The bakery-dining concept probably owes something to San Francisco’s now-closed Bar Tartine, but the menu is strongly anchored in Melbourne. Breakfast might be greens from Dandenongs producer Ramarro Farm over toum-topped toast. Danish pastry shells are filled with a version of an English breakfast with dry-cured bacon, wood-roasted tomato and fried egg.

The local obsession with anchovy toast is given a fresh spin with a puff pastry twist layered with cheddar and miso onions, glazed with fish sauce caramel, and topped with lolling anchovies. “It’s very Melbourne, taking anchovy toast to the next level,” says Doert Eccles.

Later in the day, wood-roasted calamari might be served on spring borlotti beans, asparagus is paired with marinated mozzarella, and chicken is roasted in the wood oven over a slab of sourdough, with the fat-soaked bread turning out just as tasty as the deboned bird.

“We’re aiming for delicious food over showy or overworked,” says Doert Eccles. “A lot of our techniques and flavour combinations will be put into dressings and sauces.”

The chef is energised to work in the city again after his stint in the Yarra Valley.

“Coming through the years we’ve had in Melbourne, and seeing the city change over the past 10 years, it’s about looking at what’s around us and feeling that vibe. Antara is modern Melbourne to me, and I feel really proud about that.”

October 10-14: Open Tue-Fri 7.30am-noon, Sat 8am-noon.
From October 17: Open Tue-Sat for breakfast (hours as above), lunch (noon-3pm) and dinner (5.30pm-10pm); Bakery open daily, Tue-Fri 7.30am-5.30pm, Sat 8am-5.30pm, Sun-Mon 8am-2pm.

128 Exhibition Street, Melbourne, 03 7065 0128, antara.melbourne