Kew’s Hiatus Café’s sustainability approach

The Hiatus café, which opened in Kew Junction after a brief stint as Six Slices Pizza Bar, has a particular strategy around sustainability and food.

It can only be described as a no-waste, use-all approach.

The crab shells for example used to make bisque actually poach the crabmeat.

And dehydrated carrot tops are turned into seasoning.

The Hiatus café has been around in different forms for years.

Decades ago, it operated as local Italian stalwart Bivio.

It is owned by Simon Tammesild, who was the general manager at modern Japanese restaurant Mr. Miyagi. More recently, he was the co-founder of Poké Me, a chain selling the trending Hawaiian raw fish dish.

The winter menu is very much Italian style.

It offers delicacies like pumpkin hot-cakes with native plum, persimmon and ginger custard and skirt steak on beer bread with a soft-boiled egg and preserved capsicum.

All of that straight from the cook’s nonna.

The biggest hit on the menu is the the crab omelette with meat-hand picked and it is combined with baby corn, leek and chilli ketchup.

Tammesild claims it accounts for nearly 40 per cent of orders.

All of the dishes are created by chef Greenwood-McNeair, who used to work at Richmond's Feast of Merit.

He also produces dishes featuring coconut yoghurt, fermented kimchi, strained macadamia milk and preserved seasonal produce.

Just a note for those given to taking snaps of their food for their Instagram accounts – there is plenty of lighting to create great pictures.

The light floods through the skylight into the whitewashed space.

All of the space is carefully put together and it’s sparse.

With of course the exception of some brick, brown leather banquettes and herbs tied to cutlery holders.

Installing the skylights was a challenge for Tammesild – he had to overcome his fear of heights.

But customers say it lets in so much light that it’s brighter inside than out.

Leon Getler 25th June 2018.