Firedoor’s Lennox Hastie on mastering the art of the perfect wine bar
Chef Lennox Hastie has been just as hands-on in creating his new Sydney venue as he is in the kitchen, conjuring a superb result.
Lennox Hastie invests an enormous amount of passion, dedication and attention to detail into everything he does. It’s why the chef still mans the grill at his restaurant, Firedoor, in Sydney most nights; he carefully handles the ingredients he has sourced and selected and cooks them to perfection, before presenting the result to customers who have often watched the whole process from the countertop.
It’s also why Hastie has won multiple awards and become a global sensation after being featured on the Netflix documentary series Chef ’s Table – and why you cannot get into Firedoor unless you book months in advance. That dedication, passion and meticulous attention to detail translates into incredible food.
So it is no surprise that when it came to opening his new Basque- inspired wine bar Gildas, just 25m down the street from Firedoor in Surry Hills, Hastie would be involved every step of the way – from the concept, design, art and stone for the bar tops to the napkin material and even the tableware. “Every single detail is considered,” he tells me as we stand in the shell of what will become Gildas. “Obviously, first and foremost I am a chef, but the ability to not only create the dishes but to bring together raw materials and create a space with talented people is wonderful. Everyone comes on the journey with us and we say ‘this is what we want to create and this is the vibe’.”
Hastie spent hours with ceramicist Malcolm Greenwood, who made the plates and bowls; chose artist Tan Alridge, who created the key sculpture work that will anchor Gildas; chatted to industrial designer Adam Goodrum about the chairs for the venue; and even went with interior architect Belinda Pajkovic to select the stone that will become the bar tops. “The stone [Emerald Haze Quartzite] has such a huge range of colours in the slab. It has streaks of warm brassy tones, and so it was important to us to not just present Lennox with a little sample that wasn’t representative,” says Pajkovic. “So we went on road trip to the factory.”
“I was just amazed at how different the stone was from one end to the other,” adds Hastie, recalling the experience of selecting the perfect top for Gildas’ bar. It will begin on one side of the room and wrap around the kitchen so that diners can eat at the countertop and watch the action, as they do in Firedoor. “When you have a vision for something, to see it come to life is incredible and to actually see someone manufacture the raw materials is amazing. To see how we can carve the slab in this way or that way and see the difference it makes – you feel like you are really shaping something.”
At this moment, at this site on the corner of Mary and Albion streets in Surry Hills, said bar is just chalk marks on the concrete floor. But what will be here by the end of August will be the bar on the right, a kitchen on the back wall and then a series of banquettes dividing the room.
“We will have this brass ribbon that will wrap around the top of the banquette seating, to tie into the flick of the hair,” explains Pajkovic, describing what will happen in the left-hand side of the room, where large windows meet the street. “We are again celebrating playing with the curves and celebrating the arches of the windows by creating these little curved tables that peel out from the window.”
These curves and “hair flicks”, as she describes them, are not just architectural concepts for the sake of architectural concepts. They are inspired by the bar’s namesake, Gilda, as played by Rita Hayworth in the 1946 American film noir of the same name.
So what does an old-school Hollywood bombshell have to do with Hastie? It turns out the first pintxos (which translates as small plates) created in San Sebastian in Basque country was called Gilda. A pickled green chili, an olive and an anchovy was presented on a plate to a regular called Joaquin Aramburu at Bar Casa Valles, located in the old part of the seaside town. The story goes that Aramburu skewered all the ingredients together with a cocktail stick one night and the pintxos was born. It was called the Gilda after Hayworth, as the movie had just come out and caused sensation around the world as she played a femme fatale. “For them, it embodied that slightly spicy, slightly peppery, slightly salty vibe of this strong character played by Rita Hayworth,” Hastie says of the dish that started it all in the 1940s. “And after this, it basically led to an explosion of pintxos bars in the Basque region, where people could express themselves through small bites of amazing food.”
There are now hundreds of pintxos bars in San Sebastian and each venue often only serves one dish – traditionally it is skewered – and locals travel from one pintxos bar to another all evening to stand, drink wine and socialise. Hastie knows pintxos bars well as he not only frequented them as a diner but worked in them in his 20s.
The English-born chef started working at a bar called Astelena after becoming burnt out in Michelin-starred kitchens in the UK and Sans Sebastian. Hastie had grown sick of the relentless focus on complicated techniques and instead relished the way pintxos bars used seasonal produce that changed daily, depending on what came off the fishing boats or from the farms in the mountains.
It was in Astelena that he rediscovered his love of food and also heard about a chef called Victor Arguinzoniz, who was doing amazing things grilling food over fire near the tiny village of Axpe. Hastie decided one day to hire a car and check out Arguinzoniz’s restaurant, Asador Etxebarri, and it changed the course of both their lives. Hastie went on to work for Arguinzoniz for five years. It shaped the way he approached food and led to him opening Firedoor – where he only cooks over wood fire – in Sydney in 2015, and Asador Etxebarri topped every best restaurant list in the world.
“I have always wanted to go back to my pintxos days,” explains Hastie of the motivation behind Gildas. “At those Basque bars, the food is on a level par with the drinks offering. Sometimes you get bars that are all about drinks and have a very small food offering, other times it’s restaurants that are just all food and a small wine offering. So to have the food and wine very much on an equal footing means people can drop in and have one drink and a snack or settle in for some more time.”
Gildas will hold 60 people and half of it will be released three months in advance for booking (similar to Firedoor), with the other half available for walk-ins (unfortunately no longer the case at Firedoor). “We are at capacity now for Firedoor and have a set menu. so be able to have more space here at Gildas we can share the same DNA as Firedoor but just in a different way; we will share the energy and team members across the spaces,” explains Hastie. “And I just love the idea of having lots and lots of small plates that are done incredibly well.”
The chef is opening Gildas in partnership with Fink, the restaurant group behind Firedoor as well as Bennelong and Quay with Peter Gilmore. Elizabeth Hewson, head of creative for Fink, also collaborated with Hastie and Pajkovic on this project. As we tour what is still very much a construction site, Hewson and Pajkovic show me the sculptural artwork – currently sitting on scaffolding – that has been created for Gildas by artist Tan Alridge. It will eventually hang on the wine bar’s back wall.
“With this piece we wanted to add some glamour to the room,” says Hewson of the work, which looks almost like fabric projecting from the wall. “It’s the way it falls and sits in the movement; it’s reminiscent of a dress.” Hastie, who originally found Alridge on Instagram and met with the artist multiple times on site, agrees. “It’s Gilda’s dress. It appears as its floating. It’s just beautiful.”
So with Hastie being there on Gilda’s creation every single step of the way – involved in so much more than just the usual chef remit of food and drink – does that make him a dream or a nightmare client? “Bit of both,” he laughs. “But for me everything has to have meaning, so whether it comes from me or someone else there has to be a reason, whether it’s a practical reason or design. I am always thinking, how do I balance the practical with the aesthetic when I think of a restaurant, how do I create an amazing experience?”
As for Pajokovic, she’s a fan of Hastie’s very passionate, detailed and involved approach. “Having a client who is completely in love with design, the process and having it integrated in a holistic approach is a dream,” she says. “I think the creative process is very important – not just the food side – so it is great to have Lennox involved with us for the entire process.”
Hewson agrees, although she wouldn’t mind Hastie speeding things up occasionally. “I think Lennox is a very collaborative decision maker,” she says, smiling. “I mean, you know what you want, what you like and what you don’t like, but it’s very much, here is an idea, what does everyone think? How would this best work? I just wouldn’t say they are quick decisions; they are considered decisions.”
“I may have a habit of procrastinating a bit,” Hastie jokes, smiling. But he also talks about how key it is for him to spend time with each individual involved in the process of creating Gildas so that he can understand their story and pull it all together.
“People ask me whether I always wanted to be a chef, but actually the first thing I wanted to be when I was really young was a conductor, because they had the ability to pull lots of things together,” he explains. “I can’t just wave my hands and create music, it is the artists who create the music and you are just bringing it all together in the same room. I feel that is what we are doing with all the people we have collaborated with for Gildas.”