Dubai venture for Neil Perry
Neil Perry’s multi-restaurant project in Dubai will be signed in three weeks, he says
NEIL Perry, probably Australia’s most complete chef-restaurateur, flew out to Dubai yesterday with a big deal on the table. We hear it’s a multi-restaurant project for the United Arab Emirates’ biggest city. Premature to discuss details, he said. However: “I’ll have an agreement signed in the next three weeks,” quoth Perry, who had a busy weekend at the Noosa International Food & Wine Festival with a beach lunch on Saturday before choppering off to the wedding of former union heavy Paul Howes to Qantas spin doctor Olivia Wirth. And then choppering back to Noosa for an evening festival commitment. The lives of the rich and famous.
CHEF Andrew Gimber will take the helm of an ambitious restaurant and farm project in Byron Bay planned by Darren Robertson and Mark Labrooy of Three Blue Ducks renown. Gimber is something of a mod Thai practitioner, with stints at Jimmy Liks (Sydney) Chin Chin (Melbourne) and Rae’s On Watego’s (Byron Bay). The Farm by Three Blue Ducks aims to grow all its own produce. Work starts on the restaurant later this year, following the ski season. TBD Falls Creek opens June 7 and Robertson reports the appointment of Francesco Anghileri as head chef.
“CLOSED for renovation,” says the phone message at Brutale, the Melbourne restaurant opened last year with wild hipster enthusiasm for Croatian cuisine. However, proprietor Rene de la Soyo says Brutale will reopen this week, with “a new chef”. Chef and minor investor Daniel Dobra is out. De la Soyo wanted to take the business in a direction the chef was not comfortable with, Dobra tells First Bite, and so his 10 per cent stake is up in the air and future uncertain.
QUIETLY, Tasmania convert David Moyle has been working away with his overlords on the creation of Franklin, the new restaurant-cafe project at the old Mercury building in Hobart. Moyle, a chef who left Byron Bay after three years at Pacific Dining Room and found himself a niche at Peppermint Bay south of Hobart, is excited about the commissioning of a new wood-burning cast-iron Scotch oven. “We want this to be something that’s still around in 50 years,” says the now bushranger-bearded Moyle.
SYDNEY’S Luke Mangan is spreading his wings again, this time to the Maldives. Mangan’s brand is already well established in Asia, and his next foray is with luxury hotel operator Small Maldives Island Co and its resort Amilla Fushi on Baa Atoll, one of its two planned properties. Fushi opens in November; Finolhu next year.
WHILE Adelaide’s Trimm family has trimmed its restaurant empire in recent years, it hasn’t abandoned The Grace Establishment. Aria-trained chef Paul Baker took the helm late last year and has spent the ensuing months “refining” the team, establishing new relationships with producers and abandoning the restaurant’s somewhat dude-ish menu. “Adelaide is a great place for a chef,” says Baker, 32, “we have regions like the McLaren Vale and Barossa so close to the city, so accessible.”
KURT Sampson, the former Melbourne chef who found success in Perth at Pata Negra, has flown the Nedlands coop. The Moroccan-Iberian specialist has other fish to ceviche, so to speak. He will be executive chef for Bread and Circuses group. His first project is to establish a kitchen team at The Dominion League, a bar soon to open in the old Court Wine Bar in Northbridge.
Source: The Australian - 20 May 2014
