Manu Feildel opens pub bistro
My Kitchen Rules star Manu Feildel is set to open a pub bistro after vowing never to open another venue.
Fieldel will open Bistro Red Lion by Manu at Rozelle’s 196-year-old pub The Red Lion.
The surprise move comes despite the celebrity chef calling the restaurant industry broken.
“I’m doing it for different reasons this time – or right reasons this time – I’m doing it to have fun,” Feildel told The Daily Telegraph.
“I’m not chasing the acclaim, I’m cooking the food I love for customers.”
Feildel will work with Laundy Hotels after the latter completed an eight-month, $1.5 million renovation. He was lured back by Laundy Hotels executive chef Jamie Gannon.
“I thought I would never do it again because (I) thought (the) industry is broken, but this opportunity is different. I just find it so expensive to go out these days.
Ridiculously expensive. But being with the Laundy Group I can achieve a good menu without ripping the customer off,” Feildel said.
“I’m not doing this to be a millionaire, but to satisfy something I felt was missing in my life. I’m 51 and ready to come back.”
For Gannon, bringing in Fieldel is a way to elevate Laundy’s food offering.
Feildel ran the critically acclaimed L’Etoile in Paddington before it closed in 2014.
“I’ve tried to break the stigma of what pub food is. For a lot of our pubs the food is the same as a quality restaurant, it’s just the service model that’s relaxed,” he said.
Bistro Red Lion by Manu will open from Thursday to Sunday. Its downstairs the menu will feature pub classics all week.
“Manu and I have a pre-existing relationship and I wouldn’t do this without him.
I couldn’t do it without him. The restaurant industry is too hard.”
Red Lijon will see Feildel return to his French roots.
“I’m going back to what I love, which is French Bistro food and what we did at the start of L’Etoile before I deviated. Australians have been scared of French restaurants for (a) long time because they thought it was too heavy and too rich but now we are more educated,” he said.
“The decision to open in winter is clever because the menu is like a warm hug.
There is nothing crazy, it’s just five bites, five entrees, five mains and five desserts which we will change seasonally.”
Diners can expect country-style pâté served with prune and Armagnac jam and toasted sourdough, scallop gratinée with café de Paris butter, chargrilled pork tomahawk with braised fennel and grainy mustard sauce; confit chicken Maryland on cannellini beans & kale fricassee with jus gras; and butcher’s cut of beef with pommes dauphine and a choice of house-made sauces.
The bistro is set to open on July 12.
Jonathan Jackson, 2nd July 2024
