Could this be Lauren Murdoch's next gig?

The place has had its share of awards but had fallen out of focus with the critics recently. That may change, because what's really news is who might fill his shoes. The pub's Michael Hogan wasn't returning our calls or email last week but we hear he has his heart set on one of Sydney's top women chefs, Lauren Murdoch, the former head of Merivale's pumping Frenchish bistro Felix. Murdoch has been travelling and temping around Sydney since leaving the Hemmes family's employ earlier this year but we know she's looking to get her teeth into something in the new year. "No comment," was her polite response to First Bite. 3 Weeds includes a restaurant and bistro and Murdoch - if it gets across the line - would certainly add a little PR oomph to the business. Stay tuned.

Lauren Murdoch could be in the frame for 3 Weeds.
Picture: Tracee Lea Source: The Australian

SOUTH AUSTRALIA: The award-winning Fino - just named the state's best regional restaurant by The Advertiser - will replicate itself next year in the Barossa. Chef David Swain and partner Sharon Romeo have done a deal to create Fino Seppeltsfield within one of Australia's oldest wineries, Seppeltsfield Wines. "Warren Randall (Seppeltsfield Wines managing director) ... wants to have a really excellent destination restaurant up there, so it looks like David and I are going to be doing a lot of driving next year," says Romeo.

Sharon Romeo (pictured) and chef David Swain plan to open a new Fino restaurant in the Barossa Valley.
Picture: Michael Marschall Source: The Advertiser

MELBOURNE: As reported here a month ago, New Zealander Christian McCabe has confirmed signing for the space recently vacated by Nic Poelaert in North Carlton that was his restaurant Embrasse. McCabe, best known for his Matterhorn restaurant in Wellington, will create The Town Mouse there, offering casual bar drinks and food as well as formal dining. McCabe has been at Melbourne's MoVida Aqui more than a year, looking for sites. He says he's juggling applications from three potential "name" head chefs. No clues, sadly.

MEA culpa ... Or whatever the Spanish equivalent is. Last week we said Stokehouse would be the first Aussie restaurant with a Spanish Josper coal-burning oven. Wrong. Frank Camorra has one at his new Sydney MoVida.

LONDON: The first Thai restaurant to get a Michelin star, Nahm in London, headed by Aussie David Thompson, closes in two weeks. Nahm opened in 2001 at The Halkin, a chic Belgravia hotel owned by Singaporean billionaire Christina Ong. Thompson will concentrate on the other Nahm - in Ong's Bangkok hotel The Metropolitan - which nudged inside the S. Pellegrino world's best list this year.

SYDNEY: It was a very short season for Frenchman Jerome Lagarde at Sydney's Bistro Ananas, the faux French brasserie at The Rocks headquarters of businessman John Szangolies. Lagarde was recruited from China but whether it was a lukewarm review in the local broadsheet or slack numbers, Lagarde became the old guard within three months of its launch. Across from Cut (another Szangolies restaurant) comes James Privett, who leaves his sous chef at the steak place, James Knight, in charge there.

MELBOURNE: Flying under the radar in Melbourne's CBD, Red Spice Road has expanded to a second outlet at the QV shopping centre. Long-time executive chef John McLeay, will oversee both.

BRISBANE: Sydney's Luke Nguyen has obviously found his casino experience satisfying. Having made a success of his casual Asian noodle joint - Fat Noodle - at Sydney's Star, he is set to repeat the franchise at Brisbane's Treasury Casino, and there is talk of taking it to Cairns too. The design is by Sydney firm Luchetti Krelle, which was responsible, among others, for Momofuku Seiobo and Bistro Ananas, both in Sydney.

QUOTE of the Week: "There is undeniable power to Bourdain's vulgarity, but a lot of it reads as entitled immaturity. Suggesting that aggression is the only appropriate existential response to the demands of restaurant cooking - that hardened hands and focus are best matched with hardness throughout one's life - he simulates teaching sophistication, then teaches solipsism. What it shows, mostly, is a lack of self-respect." - Author and former Chez Panisse cook Tamar Adler on fellow author Anthony Bourdain, in The New Yorker.

VICTORIA: Marco Pierre White, legendary MasterChef host, stroppy Brit and Knorr stock cubes ambassador, "was in Jimmy's Bar the other night", says our source in the Victorian rural village of Daylesford. "He ordered an iced chocolate but didn't like what he got, saying something about how it should be layered, not a homogeneous whole. So he demanded the various elements of the drink so he could make it himself, which he did."

Source: The Australian, 4 December 2012