Chris Lucas opens new elegant French restaurant Maison Batard
Four floors of elegant French dining, 100 chefs and a $50,000 chandelier — celebrated restauranter Chris Lucas has left no expense spared in Maison Batard, opening this week.
Influential restaurateur Chris Lucas has put it all on the line with Maison Batard — a lavish Bourke St restaurant filled with antiquities and French paintings which opens on Tuesday in the southern capital.
It has taken him eight years and the restoration of three crumbling heritage buildings to create the four level restaurant with basement supper club and soaring rooftop terrace as well as sublime dining spaces and even more sublime French food – but will he recoup the millions of dollars he has outlaid on the lavish interiors?
“The costs have blown out, there’s been a huge inflationary spike in building costs, but this is a legacy project for me.
“I could sell a lot of chateaubriand but I don’t think I will get the money back I’ve spent creating Maison Batard,” Lucas confessed to The Australian with a shrug.
The Melbourne restaurant king won’t disclose how much it cost to purchase the buildings and undertake the restoration for the restaurant which has around 180 covers adding that the buildings were originally built for GW Hall in 1901 and were designed by the renowned Melbourne architect William Salway. From 1932 the building housed the iconic The Italian Society restaurant which was opened by Giuseppe Codognotto. Its waiters were instrumental in introducing European food culture to Melbourne and became known as “The Spaghetti Society”.
For Lucas, who also owns restaurants in Sydney (Chin Chin) and Canberra (Carlotta), it’s more a passion and a legacy project and he is proud that in these tough times he has created jobs for 500 staff at Maison Batard including 100 chefs.
“Employing 500 staff is no mean feat … we are hoping to reinvigorate this city,” he says.
“Restaurants are one of the toughest businesses in Australia. It’s as tough today as it’s ever been. We are facing unprecedented rising costs, spending is down, it’s as challenging as ever, for some reason I keep opening restaurants in the middle of a war or when spending is down.
“I opened Botanical at the start of the Iran/Iraq war. I opened Chin Chin in Melbourne in the Global Financial Crisis. We opened Society in Melbourne during the first covid lock down and we had hired 500 staff. We opened Grill Americano coming out of a pandemic.
“You have to take a long-term view. If you want to make a lot of money … I certainly would not recommend the restaurant business.”
So why is it important to Lucas?
“My fate in life was to be a restaurateur.”
Of the Maison Batard eight-year restoration he says he probably wouldn’t do it again. “It’s taken a lot of physical and creative effort. “My staff would not let me do it again.”
But in Canberra, which Lucas bills as a “sophisticated city”, he’s unstoppable and has just announced he will open a second restaurant — a French bistro.
“Canberrans have the highest disposable income in the country, they are very well travelled, I can see it in the wine they are ordering and the food they are eating.”
For Melbourne’s Maison Batard at the top of Bourke St, Lucas has gone heavy on staff hirings because the restaurant will open seven days for lunch and dinner and he wants staff fresh on their shifts.
He’s purchased two stunning Claire Fontaine paintings from Europe, table lamps and menu holders from French flea markets, a French chandelier from Milan, which started out costing $A50,000 and took nine months to restore, and is flying in “very expensive” salted butter from Normandy, which he serves with his own bread baked in situ. “I am pretty adamant we had to have great bread.”
“People want to eat simply cooked French provincial with an Australian overlay.”
Chocolate mousse is served from a trolley with chantilly cream and Belgian chocolate shards atop. But it’s airy and light.
“I don’t like the dining to be too one dimensional,” Lucas says. “People like the trolley service.
“Only about one third of people go on to dessert. When we went on to trolley service that jumped to two thirds.”
Lucas is keen to stress that unlike Sydney hospitality kings he does not own pubs and is not into gaming. “I create a la carte restaurants, you sit down and someone serves you. “Others have a more diversified business.
“We are one of the biggest employers in the country with 2500 employees, we will continue to build our portfolio.
“(But) I don’t have the luxury of another eight years to work on a project that is this complex as Maison Batard. It’s about the quality and how important a site is to a city. I want to leave a cultural imprint.”
“For me it’s site dependent.”
But when it comes to succession planning he seems stuck for words.
“I have not thought about it to be honest.
“I think about the now.
“When you have a passion, we don’t do succession planning, it’s not what drives us.”
The writer travelled to Melbourne as a guest of Chris Lucas
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