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At Yiaga, in a lush city-fringe park, the ambitious young chef has created a restaurant defiantly his own: a celebration of Australia’s natural riches, from the ingredients down to the bricks.
Take one of Australia’s most awarded chefs and one of Australia’s most legendary architects, add 13,000 terracotta tiles and what do you get? Yiaga, Vue de Monde chef Hugh Allen’s first solo project, which opens today on the doorstep of Melbourne CBD.
Taking an old kiosk in Fitzroy Gardens and transforming it into a dining landmark is no mean feat. Allen instead relied on a Rolodex of Australian artisans to bring the vision to life. “I didn’t want to import anything,” says Allen. “All the craft people are based here.”
With the help of Melbourne architect John Wardle, that feat became a little more friendly for Allen. “John Wardle is one of Australia’s great architects,” he says. “When [he] and I first met, we spoke about bricks and clay for, like, half an hour ... That resonated with me as a chef.”
Those bricks, made by third-generation Victorian brickmakers using local clay, are laid to replicate the texture of the surrounding Fitzroy Gardens elms. Inside, 13,000 handmade terracotta tiles line the walls in sweeping cinnamon-coloured waves. The flooring, concrete mixed with iron dust, evokes the feeling of pressed red dirt.
“I think Australia has a feeling,” says Allen. “It has a design vibe. I don’t think we need to look to anyone else, really.”
Yiaga is not Vue 2.0. While the venue is bankrolled by billionaire brothers Philip and Robert Ng (they have a majority stake in Vue de Monde, which holds three hats in the latest Age Good Food Guide), the businesses share little else. The only overlap is a shared senior team, including Allen, general manager Hugo Simoes and wine director Dorian Guillon, who will work across both venues.
Whereas Vue de Monde still retains traces of founding chef Shannon Bennett, who ran the kitchen for 19 years, Yiaga is entirely Allen’s project.
He’s used this clean slate to write a menu that treads a fine line of Noma-reverence and being very much itself. (Several of Yiaga’s chefs have spent significant time working at the game-changing Copenhagen fine diner, including Scottish expat and head chef Michael McAulay.)
“Australia has a feeling. It has a design vibe. I don’t think we need to look to anyone else, really.”
Hugh Allen, Yiaga chef and co-ownerIt’s still early days, and the dishes are changeable, shifting with the seasons and available ingredients. There might be Granny Smith and Geraldton wax. Coconut and caviar. Coral trout and Mexican chilli. White miso and desert lime. Herbaceous burns and citric pops. Deep umami and salty funk.
You’ll get all of that in a subversive, three-ish-hour tasting menu ($295 a head, excluding drinks) that moves at a surprisingly swift pace. Wines are 70 per cent Aussie and, no, there is no chocolate souffle.
Unlike the sleek, noir setting of Vue de Monde, Yiaga (“to seek and find” in Woiwurrung, the language of traditional owners, the Wurundjeri people) is a place bathed in natural light, with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the park. There’s an earthiness here – not just the colour palette, but in the service style, too.
Think of it as fine-dining in Blundstones, not wingtips. Natural, tactile, relaxed.
Yiaga officially opens today, Thursday, October 16.
Fitzroy Gardens, East Melbourne, yiaga.au
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