“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.”
— Daniel J. Boorstin, American social historian and educator
Entire Sydney suburbs plunged into darkness as more power outages loom 7News. I would have been spared in my old stomping grounds. But this is early winter down under. Daily highs in Sydney in mid-upper 60s and lows in mid 40s. What gives? I gather it has to do with price caps. But why are those being triggered now
A fresh Reuters Institute report detects an epidemic of news avoidance
Seventies decor, French bistros and indigenous flowers are some of the references design studio Luchetti Krelle has mixed inside this bar in Sydney, Australia, which occupies a converted butcher.
Jane and Arthur at Surry Hills
The mother of all restaurant trends
What’s in a name? A lifetime of respect, love and admiration, if the latest restaurant naming trend is anything to go by.
Some of the country’s most high-profile new openings have taken their moniker from the chef’s grandmother or other inspirational family matriarch.
Restaurateur and chef Tristan Rosier at his new restaurant which he has named after his grandmother, Jane. Oscar Colman
“My grandmother’s attitude has always been, ‘Come as you are, the door is always open, you’re always welcome and we’ll always have good food for you’,” says Sydney’s Tristan Rosier of his just-opened Surry Hills eatery Jane. “So it made sense to name my restaurant after her, because that’s what we want to do here as well.”
In Hobart, chef Massimo Mele was inspired to name his sophisticated Italian diner after his nonna’s nickname, Peppina.
“It’s about doing the right thing and paying homage to the women in my life,” says Mele of the just-opened flagship restaurant at Marriott’s The Tasman hotel.
All of my core values in cooking, that respect for simplicity, I owe to my mother Maria and my grandmother Giuseppina,” he says.
“That sense of immediacy you get when you bite into a just-picked tomato at the peak of the season … that’s what I experienced as a child in Naples and that’s what I want our diners to experience, too.“
Massimo Mele, culinary director of The Tasman, Hobart’s new five-star hotel. He is pictured outside his contemporary Italian restaurant Peppina, named in honour of his Italian “nonna”. Adam Gibson
In Victoria, at the $100 million-plus redevelopment of the Continental Sorrento, chef Scott Pickett is putting the final touches to signature restaurant Audrey’s, set to open in March on the second floor of the heritage art deco building.
“It’s such a beautiful old building and the name is a bit nostalgic, so it suits the space as well as the menu,” says Pickett.
As a child, Pickett spent a lot of time on the coast with his grandmother, swimming, fishing and cooking flathead, his favourite fish.
Audrey loved seafood – her birthday treat was crayfish. So the seafood focus of the menu makes sense in more ways than one.
“Audrey’s is my chance to pay my respects to someone who really took care of me, because my mum worked full-time.”
Common to all three chefs is a desire to reconnect with the past, “to look back in order to look forward”, as Pickett says. Might the experience of living through a pandemic be chiefly responsible for this shift in priorities? There’s no question.
Chef Scott Pickett, right, and publican Craig Shearer at the Continental Hotel in Sorrento, where Pickett’s new restaurant will be named after his grandmother, Audrey.
“I think it’s given us a bit more time to reflect on what’s important,” says Rosier, whose other restaurant, Arthur, is named after his late grandfather.
“A restaurant can really take on the personality of someone, and in a way they get to live forever when you honour them like that.“
Not every contemporary grandmother-influenced restaurant takes the name of the matriarch. Ho Jiak, in Sydney’s Town Hall, was created in honour of chef Junda Khoo’s Malaysian grandmother; while the name of the group’s second restaurant, Amah, in Chatswood, means “grandmother” in Teochew and Hokkien.
Chef Neil Perry in the kitchen of his new restaurant Margaret in Double Bay. Louie Douvis
But the father – if we can call him that – of the current trend is arguably Australia’s best-known chef, Neil Perry, whose Double Bay restaurant Margaret was ahead of the curve when it opened, belatedly, in October.
Taking its name from his late mother, Margaret has set the tone for a genre of upscale restaurants more geared towards personal expression than the pre-COVID model.
