Chris Lucas to open new Japanese restaurant in Melbourne

Restaurateur Chris Lucas embarks on his biggest and priciest project yet, promising to break the mould in Melbourne.

Chris Lucas (right) with Phillip Rich and Shaun Presland.

Influential Melbourne restaurant entrepreneur Chris Lucas is on the cusp of his biggest — and most expensive — dining project yet.

The man behind Flinders Lane powerhouse Chin Chin, Windsor’s Hawker’s Hall and Richmond’s Kong and Baby, and the soon-to-open Chin Chin in Sydney’s Surry Hills, has started work on a three-level Japanese restaurant — also in Flinders Lane — that he promises will break the mould in the Melbourne market.

Chris Lucas at Chin Chin.

To make it happen, Lucas has recruited chef Shaun Presland, a former resident of Japan, Nobu chef, launch-chef for Merivale’s Sushi-E in Sydney and the founding executive chef of the national Sake group of restaurants. Lucas and Presland travel to Tokyo — where Lucas lived in his past life as a technology entrepreneur — in two weeks to begin the specialist recruitment process for the as-yet unnamed restaurant they oipe to open in March.

The pair is only recently back from the US researching the project.

“It’s fair to say the restaurant will take inspiration from both Masa (New York) and Urusawa in Los Angeles,” Lucas says of the two most famous Japanese restaurants in the US.

Lucas signed the lease last week for three levels — basement, ground floor and first — of the office building directly opposite Andrew McConnell’s Supernormal.

“It’s a serious size, 600 square metres,” says Lucas, who has fished outside the usual restaurant architecture pond to recruit his friend Randall Marsh, of the bespoke residential practice Wood Marsh, to design the restaurant.

“I want to bring a really high level of design to this project, not just with design but curated art too … It will cost a lot more than I’ve spent in the past few years, but I don’t want to put a figure on it. It’s not about the money, it’s about quality.”

The restaurant will seat around 150 — including a substantial sushi bar — over the two lower levels. The first floor will comprise “a restaurant within a restaurant” says Lucas, with an omakase room that will allow small groups to customise their own Japanese experience, he says.

Of his new chef, Lucas says Presland “has hefty credentials … He’s a serious student of Japan and Japanese food,” he says.

“I lived in Japan for quite a while. I’ve always wanted to do something along these lines. The only thing that’s really held me back has been finding a chef who could execute it.”