Popular restaurateur Chris Lucas, will open his 15th restaurant and first Greek restaurant, Noema, in Melbourne’s CBD this spring.
Noema is sure to be just as elegant as his other restaurants: Southeast Asian-inspired Chin Chin, French dining venue Maison Batard, and Japanese spots Yakimono, Kisume and Tombo Den.
Noema will open at the base of a new 48-storey, $1.1 billion tower at 435 Bourke Street.
“I’ve been asked by umpteen people for years why I haven’t opened a Greek restaurant, and I never really had a proper answer,” he said. “I’ve always wanted to do what is not the obvious thing.”
Despite Melbourne being one of the world’s largest Greek communities outside of Greece, Lucas didn’t believe Melburnians were ready for Greek cuisine.
“I’ve always, in some ways, waited for Greek food to get to this point where it’s seen as a legitimate form of modern eating,” he said.
“I didn’t want to do your typical taverna-type restaurant. There are a lot of those around, and they do a great job.”
Chris and Sarah Lucas. Photo: Dan Castano.
At Noema, the menu is built around what Lucas describes as “elegant simplicity”, featuring seafood and meats cooked over charcoal, in wood-fired ovens or on a rotisserie, alongside pulses, seasonal vegetables and salads inspired by his parents’ home cooking. Ingredients include olive oil from Salonika and organic oregano sourced from the hills near Athens.
The restaurant’s two-level design, created by Lucas, his wife Sarah Lucas, and interior design studio Mitchell & Eades, reflects the same approach. Rather than relying on Mediterranean clichés, it uses natural materials such as timber, tile, leather and linen, with olive trees marking the entrance.
The curved façade windows, designed by the Lucases in collaboration with Bates Smart, are intended to evoke the shape of boats on the Mediterranean.
Lucas has chosen the name Noema for the restaurant, a Greek word for ‘a thought, concept or object of contemplation.’
“It’s thinking about what it was like growing up as a young Greek guy in a Greek family where food used to be everything,” he explained. “My contemplation of what it’s been like growing up in a city full of Greeks, and my time going back there. This is probably the most personal experience I’ve ever had with a restaurant.”
Noema will open at 435 Bourke Street this spring.
Source: Broadsheet
Dining and Cooking