Light Years is the dining star of Australia’s coastal holiday towns
The trio who founded Light Years in 2017 have continued on their mission to bring good food and wine to coastal holiday towns – and they have no desire to return to the big city.
It is just after 5pm on a Wednesday night and Light Years restaurant in Burleigh Heads is packed. It’s usually dinner time for the early birds (aka families with young children and the retired), but this very cool modern Asian diner is bustling with people outside these demographics: couples on dates, groups of friends, colleagues catching up ,and even a few relaxed holidaymakers in no rush at all.
They are all enjoying the cocktails (the Lola Paloma with tequila, Campari, chili, watermelon and lime is particularly good), the food (kingfish ceviche with coconut, chili, and kaffir lime is delicious, and frustratingly, you can’t mop up the leftover sauce with chopsticks) and the buzzy atmosphere. They are also here this early because it may have been the only time they could get in to eat for dinner.
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The fact that this regional venue – in the suburbs of the Gold Coast and on a busy highway – is full of diners is testament to the success of the restaurateurs behind Light Years; Kim Stephen, James Sutherland and Robbie Oijvall. This is indeed the fourth Light Years venue for the trio, as they opened up the first Light Years in Byron Bay in 2017 after successfully identifying a need for good quality food and wine – basically what you get in the city – in holiday towns along Australia’s coast.
Not that any of this was really planned. Light Years started with Stephen and Sutherland wanting to get out of Sydney.
“We both come from bigger cities and I think in part this happened organically because we’ve chosen to live in these beautiful towns and then seen the opportunities in these regional areas,” Stephen tells WISH. “When I first came to Byron Bay, while it was very popular and tourist dense, it was still lacking the dining offering of Sydney and Melbourne. Our philosophy and our mindset was: why can’t we have the same quality dining in a coastal, regional, touristy town? It was baffling as to why there wasn’t that level here in the first place.”
The pair, with executive chef Robbie Oijvall, opened the first Light Years at the end of an arcade off the main street in Byron Bay (the fact it was almost hidden was very Melbourne). The retro-inspired Asian eatery and bar was a hit almost immediately with tourists, and more importantly, with the locals. Then came Light Years in Noosa, Burleigh Heads and Newcastle. The trio came full circle, most recently opening a brand new Light Years in Byron Bay after they outgrew the tiny venue they started with.
The restaurant is in a new development called the Jonson Lane Precinct, just 15 minutes’ walk from the beach, which meant that the Light Years team got to design their first eatery from scratch and could finally make it a bit bigger to help cope with demand. They worked with interior designer Sarah Ellison and Studio Plenty to create a space with a more elevated, urban feel than the original.
“This is kind of our love letter to Byron Bay,” explains Stephen. “It being our home, it being the first destination that helped us build the brand, we just felt like it would be an injustice not to return and give the locals who supported us a new venue, an exciting new menu. After five years here it was also time to step it up, and we are really seeing other players now in Byron Bay and it is growing rapidly as a tourist destination.”
The other factor that has helped Light Years has been the pandemic changing the way people work so that it is no longer necessary to be tethered to expensive capitals such as Sydney. “It’s amazing to see how all these coastal towns are developing and so many people are moving from cities to live here,” says Sutherland. “There is just an energy now that you are seeing along the east coast and there is new appetite for exciting things. They have jobs, they have money and they are living this great life of surfing in the morning, working during the day, and they now have good restaurant to go and eat at night. There is a real buzz on the coast and we are very grateful to be in the middle of it.”
Stephen and Sutherland have also looked beyond Light Years and opened up a new Japanese hibachi grill and wine bar called Moonlight in Byron Bay, with the food helmed by Oijvall, as well as an Italian eatery called Pixie with head chef Matteo Tine (formerly of Melbourne culinary institution Grossi Florentino) to tap into another gap they identified – the need for really good modern Italian food. There is also Frankies Gelato with chef Franco Giordano, an all-natural handmade gelato bar.
“Moonlight is our little take on a Japanese-style bar so everything is cooked over coals, and it’s small, intimate and quite different from Light Years conceptually as well as in the food offering,” explains Stephen. “It’s dark, moody, and it’s a late-night type of venue. It also gives Robbie, our executive chef, a whole new creative outlet, which is really rewarding after doing Light Years for five years.”
So what is next for the growing regional hospitality group – maybe an outpost in the big cities? “We do get emails saying come to Melbourne, come to Sydney,” says Stephen. “But I think we are really comfortable with our four Light Years now and that is our focus. We want to make sure that the menus keep evolving and are fresh, and we are not just running the next venue and leaving the others in the dust behind. We now get to watch our customers enjoy the experience.”