The Regatta Hotel appoints Executive Chef for stage 2 and beyond
Brisbane’s iconic Regatta Hotel has appointed the multi-award winning Shane Keighley as Executive Chef, charged with launching the much anticipated Stage 2 of the hotel’s restaurant and food offering after the flood redevelopment.
As keeper of the Regatta Hotel’s kitchen, Keighley will drive the opening of the new Courtyard and the reopening of The Boatshed, as well as steering the delivery of menus in the booming Front Bar and Sidewalk Café. His role includes full menu development, supplier sourcing and dining experience delivery.
It’s a huge role to fill and one Shane Keighley is more than prepared for, having captained the medal-winning Australian Culinary Olympics Team since 2008!
With top level national and international experience, he has a long history of competition which has seen him represent Australia both as an individual and team basis. He is three times winner of the Oceanafest Restaurant of Champions and has captained this team in New Zealand, Thailand and Singapore, scoring gold medals in each competition.
In fact, he’s just back from leading the Australian team in the 2012 NZCA Gourmet Pacific Challenge.
A West Australian birth, Keighley completed his apprenticeship at the Parmelia Hilton in Perth before spreading his culinary wings at the famed Mullaloo Beach Hotel, and over the next few years at Halo, Vines and Oceanus Restaurants in the CBD. In 1994 he flew to Switzerland to the position of Chef de Partie at the Hotel Bellevue Palace in Berne, followed by Stage Chef positions at Villa Lorraine in Brussels, Hotel du Rhone in Geneva and De Barrier in Steevort, Belgium.
In 2009 he returned to Australia having gained invaluable international experience, and moved to Queensland, as Group Executive Chef at the famed Wilson’s Boathouse in Manly, Portside and Melbourne. He’s also no stranger to the small screen, having starred on My Restaurant Rules in Perth in 2005, as well in the 2010 Restaurant Wars and others. It is from this position he joins The Regatta Hotel as Executive Chef.
The Regatta Hotel is set to launch Stage 2 of its $10million+ restoration in August with the opening of The Courtyard and The Boatshed, before the Cellar Bar opens later in the year.
One of Brisbane’s most famed dining venues, The Boatshed at The Regatta will return to its previous repute under Shane’s guiding hand as a modern steakhouse, specialising in dry aging, showcasing over 15 cuts of steak as part of its new menu.
The Boatshed is expected to open in late August with The Courtyard, offering a lighter, tapas-inspired shared dining menu, opening just before.
The Regatta Hotel is one of Queensland’s most historic and famous pubs, standing sentinel over the city she’s the Grand Lady of the Brisbane River. She is classified by the National Trust of Queensland, was entered in the Queensland Heritage Register in 1992 and is also on the Register of the National Estate of Australian Heritage Commission.
Following the devastating floods of January 2011, a $10million restoration began on the hotel, to revisit her glory days, when her iron-laced verandas signalled a hotel of true heritage note. Over the last 12 months, Brisbane’s best ‘tradies’ and heritage specialists have been carefully working and the new chapter is almost ready to be unveiled.
The result is set to be breathtaking: a seamless marriage of modern functionality and design with Richard Gailey’s celebrated historical architecture and fine craftsmanship of old. It is a rare restoration feat and indeed a story all on its own.
Source: eTravel Blackboard, 27 June 2012
