The Melbourne Food & Drink Forecast Pt.1: The Power Players
On Melbourne's quiet coffee king, A-Mac's Bris Vegas vacation, and the triple-decker restaurant rush
We have arrived anew, and a shiny fresh year still glimmering with promise lays ahead of us. The leftovers are more or less dealt with, and while Boxing Day toasties still reign supreme, residual ham and turkey special fried rice is becoming a tradition in our house. Across Melbourne Park, the social sports sect’s eyes turn from the MCC to RLA, as we all magically manifest a deep interest in tennis for two weeks. And in the cities and suburbs, our favourite food & drink venues are finding respite where they can. The brutal 1-2-3 combo of End of Year Party Season into Christmas into New Years will have left staff exhausted and cool rooms depleted, and while the 9 to 5ers luxuriate in leisurely lost days (partaking in godless pagan rituals like camping), the war rages on for team hospo.
I myself imbibed far too liberally over the festive period, falling at the final hurdle of a Caligula-esque revelry rampage, and succumbing to illness. Like a prime Andy Murray Australian Open run I looked near unbeatable in stretches, but no campaign is ever perfect, and I shall rise again. In my days recuperating, my mind turned to the year ahead, and how the Melbourne hospitality industry will change in 2024. As I’ve been at pains to state in the past, it’s long been my view that our local restaurant scene is on the crest of a wave; as economic conditions continue to worsen, the cost of doing business is hovering at an unsustainable level. But still, there are some green shoots of positivity growing through the concrete.
So, with an eye to better days ahead and a nod to Alana Dimou’s brilliant annual instagram post, we present the Bureau Melbourne Food & Drink Forecast 2024. Today is part one, focusing on the movers and shakers who will frame the year ahead.
Julian Moussi’s Quiet World Domination Bid
When you think about influential figures in the Melbourne coffee scene, who do you think of? Salvatore Malatesta, the industrious impresario behind St. Ali? What about Fleur Studd of clan Studd, the founder of Market Lane and the incredibly influential Melbourne Coffee Merchants? Or possibly Nathan Toleman, the creative force that reinvented brunch with Top Paddock, Kettle Black and Higher Ground, flipped them, and pivoted to restaurants? Well, as the prophet Yoda once said: there is another. You may not know Julien Moussi, but chances are you’ve been to one of his venues: there are, after all, over 20 of them.
In fact, Moussi’s imprint transcends the coffee realm: there’s pubs, restaurants and wine bars too. The 35 year old ex-VFL footballer has quietly become one of Melbourne’s most prominent hospitality figures, his Only Hospitality Group undertaking one of the most ambitious expansions in recent memory. Moussi, who also owns Inglewood Coffee Roasters, which obviously services all of his venues, has done it largely by stealth; instead of pursuing expensive and high-risk CBD locations, Moussi has built his empire from the outer suburbs in.
Barely a week passes without news of another venue, always along a similar aesthetic line and featuring interchangeable names like “Buckley”, “Bonny”, “Hobson” and “Willim” popping up in an underserved suburban area in an old disused brick building. Also amongst the group is the Juliette brand, a takeaway espresso bar that utilises simple, low friction fit outs, ergonomic use of space and minimal staffing requirements to expand rapidly. All baked goods and sandwiches are prepared offsite, making the model easily replicable and scalable. I like his venues just fine; they are consistent, usually affordable, and almost unilaterally staffed by a pleasant and engaged team, though none of them strive too loftily for culinary excellence.
One wonders what the end game is for Moussi. A recent pivot to coastal venues has proven a winner, the sleek millennial minimalism of his fitours offering inner city comforts to holidayers in Geelong, Rosebud, Blairgowrie and Sorrento. There is, I would suggest, a limit to how many of these venues we need, and how many young people that are ready and willing to work there. It has long been my suspicion that Moussi has some powerful backers, and I expect his vision for his wildly expanding group to become clearer in 2024. Those with a keen interest in the powerbrokers of the Melbourne scene would do well to get to keep an eye on Mr. Moussi.
A-Mac goes to Bris Vegas
It is a running joke within the Melbourne hospo community that Trader House group, the recently renamed empire of chef Andrew McConnell and Jo McGann is, in the most respectful of terms, a bit of a cult. The group’s unwavering commitment to quality, service and firmly established “way of doing things” is legendary, and who can argue with the results? For my money, there is no safer bet for a night out than a Trader House venue, and in the much-gushed over and resplendent opening of Gimlet in 2020, McConnell delivered not only the restaurant the city always needed, but landed a hammer blow on any debate over who Melbourne’s restaurant king is.
The logical next step has always been interstate expansion. Though rumours have always swirled about a foray into Sydney, it is instead Brisbane that will be the beneficiary of The McConnell way in 2024, as the chef brings his Asian fusion concept Supernormal to Queen Street. The move is a canny one. With the Olympics on the horizon and a major upswing in infrastructure afoot, Brisbane is primed for a renaissance, with a quietly booming restaurant scene building in the background.
How Trader House differentiates this Supernormal from the Melbourne original will be interesting; I’m expecting it to be more different than many expect, though not so different that they’d dare not put the lobster roll on the menu. For such a picturesque riverside city, there is a lack of quality waterside venues in the Brisbane CBD, the fantastic Howard Smith Wharves development notwithstanding; expect Supernormal to become the city’s hottest venue upon arrival. McConnell has shown a remarkable ability to connect with what Melbourne wants to eat, at precisely the right time; connecting to the Brisbane public may prove a different proposition.
Battle of the multi-level CBD mega restaurant
CBD traders will tell you, central Melbourne is far from the buzzing hub of culture and commerce it was before the pandemic. While workers reluctantly begin to drag themselves back to the office, the reality for most workplaces is that the hybrid model is here to stay. The effect on our restaurants, bars and cafes has been seismic; the normal, somewhat predictable flow of a week is now thrown off by work from home days; staffing requirements have changed dramatically, and after-work trade has been cut dramatically. As it exists today, our CBD is as much a leisure destination as a business district, but an incoming boom in large scale central venues could suggest the tides are turning.
Many venues sadly didn’t make it to the other side of the pandemic, the unfortunate result being a glut of available sites. In their place, a number of restaurateurs are lining up to roll the dice on Melbourne returning to its former glory, and unsurprisingly, Chris Lucas leads the charge. Located at the top of Bourke Street, Batard, originally announced almost 5 years ago, will be the Lucas Group’s foray into classic French cuisine; a three storey ode to Parisian casual dining. How much Melbourne needs another grand steakhouse is another matter entirely, but Lucas and his team will back themselves to deliver a successful concept.
Further down Bourke, Sydney’s budding supergroup Ho Jiak bring their hatted Malaysian cuisine to Melbourne town later this year. This one has me intrigued; chef Junda Khoo has taken the Ho Jiak brand from a cult industry favourite to a powerhouse with four venues across Sydney. Curiously, Malaysian food has never ascended to the heights of other South Asian cuisines in Melbourne, and never to the scale and grandiosity that Ho Jiak will deliver it. I expect this one to be near impossible to get a table at upon opening.
Meanwhile, over on Exhibition, the newly minted Otso Otso group will open Askal, bringing contemporary Filipino cuisine to the city, lead by former Amaru chef John Rivera. You’ll perhaps know Rivera best from his pandemic-era hustle made good Kariton Sorbetes, the Filipino gelato and dessert bar rapidly expanding across Melbourne, and heavily rumoured to be opening its first Sydney outpost this year (though you didn’t hear that from me).
Askal, like Batard and Ho Jiak, will be three storeys too, incorporating a bar and private dining capabilities. This trend towards large multi-level venues, soon to include an expanded HER and whatever it is Justin Hemmes is cooking up, suggests an unprecedented availability of large, affordable CBD sites. It’s an old fashioned gold rush, and the group that hits paydirt will go a long way to establishing themselves in the Melbourne restaurant wars.
In the next edition of The Melbourne Food & Drink forecast, we’ll be looking at some of the trends, good or bad, that will shape 2024.