Pablo Tordesillas takes on Resident; Alex Munoz at old Noma site, Barangaroo
Pablo Tordesillas becomes a Resident; Alex Munoz goes harbourside; and other gossip from the nation’s top kitchens.
Alex Munoz, head chef at Potts Point’s Monopole, will go waterside to run the kitchen at the forthcoming, as yet unnamed, Barangaroo restaurant for Bentley boys Brent Savage and Nick Hildebrandt. Savage and Hildebrandt revealed earlier this year they would take the space vacated by Noma to create a seafood restaurant at the new precinct, due to open in September. It will take to four — including Monopole and Yellow — the Bentley pair’s collection. They have given the design brief to Melbourne architect and former (McConnell group) restaurateur Pascale Gomes-McNabb.
PERTH: As mooted here several weeks ago, the on-again off-again “Mary Street goes to Perth’s CBD” project is a definite goer. West Australian restaurateurs Paul Aron and Michael Forde have signed up for the space at Perth’s Harry Seidler-designed QV1 once known as Bar One. “All the issues are resolved and we are now full steam ahead,” Aron told us last week. For Aron, it’s a welcome return to the CBD where he made Greenhouse such a success (although enlightened eco-designer Joost Bakker usually gets most of the credit, with what’s left over mostly attributed to founding chef Matt Stone, now at Oakridge in Victoria’s Yarra Valley). The new CBD business will include a second Mary Street Bakery (the original is in Mount Lawley), which will open by late June. The main space, a specialty liquor store, bar and restaurant, should be open by early October. Chefs and other key personnel are for now a closely guarded secret. By way of rationalising their business for the future move, Forde and Aron have split with business partner John Little, who is now the sole proprietor of the rollicking El Publico.
PERTH: Still in the West, rumours of a Dinner by Heston for Perth’s Crown just won’t go away. The story got about Margaret River Gourmet Escape last year where there may have been a few Heston lieutenants participating in the event. Well, Heston’s agent Jonny Dawes is in Perth this week, dining about town, catching up with friends and no doubt staying at Crown. We doubt he’s there for a holiday.
SYDNEY: The small but expanding Lotus Group, with its vast and rather sexy mod-Chinese restaurant Lotus in The Galeries centre, has confirmed it will do a major new restaurant at Barangaroo. Lotus at Barangaroo, technically, will be the group’s fifth place; The Resident is due to open late this month in College Street, next to Hyde Park, adding to Lotus Walsh Bay and The Galeries. Resident chef — boom boom — is Spaniard Pablo Tordesillas, who has kept a very low professional profile since the demise of Brisbane’s lauded Ortiga in October 2013. It will be Mediterranean. The group also will do another smallish Lotus at Grosvenor Place in Sydney’s CBD this year. Sydney design firm DS17 (Paul Papadopoulos), which did Lotus at The Galeries (and Alpha, not far away) is on the case for all three forthcoming projects.
SYDNEY: Papadopoulos (see above) is a busy bloke. As well as the Lotus Group projects, he has designed another of the major Barangaroo food businesses, Bel & Brio, “multifaceted food and beverage (licensed) tenancies including a supermarket, wine bar and cafe, bottle shop and associated outdoor seating”, according to City of Sydney documents. Estimated cost of fitout: “$1,637,925.” He’s in negotiation with another restaurant tenant on a commission down there, too, and filling his spare moments supervising the (well past deadline) work at Beta, the forthcoming (late this month, early next month) upstairs mezedes bar sibling to downstairs Alpha, in Castlereagh Street.
MELBOURNE: Punch Lane — the address, not the restaurant of the same name — gets another dining option later this year when Adam Liston opens Honcho, between Longrain and Rosa’s Kitchen. Despite a Latino ring to it, the name in fact derives from a Japanese word and will play to Liston’s Japanese food leanings. Liston’s partnership with the Hotel Windsor’s well-heeled Halim family means a vacant site will be transformed with a bespoke structure designed by leading Melbourne architect Kerstin Thompson.
MELBOURNE: This week will see the opening (for public consumption, that is) of the new, French-ish Oter, a joint venture between chef Florent Gerardin and the team behind Coda and Tonka. Gerardin’s last gig was at Pei Modern (Melbourne). Oter is in the space known for so many years as Yu-U, in Flinders Lane, and indeed all three restaurants are within a camembert toss each other. With the new, Frenchy Hubert, under chef Dan Pepperell in Sydney, getting more hype than the new Star Wars, it will be interesting to see if Oter is Melbourne’s answer to the Hubert challenge of “top this.”
SYDNEY: Is that duck you smell on Liverpool Street? After seven months on the bench, famous Sydney chow-house BBQ King re-opened in its flash new digs yesterday with duck ovens running flat-chat. BBQ King suddenly closed in Goulburn Street last year when lease negotiations broke down; the new, three-level restaurant was in a fit-out frenzy last week when First Bite stuck an unwelcome nose through the door; it looks a little more glamorous than we remember the original, although fatigue and emotion may have muddied the once-clear waters of recollection.
TASMANIA: Cheesemaker of note Nick Haddow is about to fulfill a lifelong dream. Haddow has bought a dairy farm on which he intends to build a cheesery dedicated to raw milk cheese. Haddow is best known for his Bruny Island cheese brand, and his C2 raw milk cheese, but you can be sure we will hear a lot more in coming years of the fromages he develops at Glen Huon from his own herd. “It’s a bit of a dream come true for me,” says the cheesemaker.