The word Kisumé, chosen by serial restaurateur Chris Lucas for his new three-level Japanese restaurant in Melbourne means “a pure obsession with beauty”.
It also signifies a pure obsession by both Lucas and his general manager of wine Philip Rich with Chablis, the northernmost wine district in France’s Burgundy region.
When it opens in May, Kisumé will have a 60-bottle chablis bar to complement an exclusive 12-seat sushi bar on the top level.
“Chablis produces chardonnays with a flintiness, subtlety, balance and cut-through that partner perfectly with the delicacy and freshness of seafood,” says Rich, a former long-time wine writer for this magazine.
Kisumé marks yet more expansion for the Lucas Group, which makes its first venture into Sydney in August when Chin Chin opens in the heritage Griffiths Tea building on Goulburn Street, Surry Hills.
A dream team will work the Kisumé kitchen – Korean sushi master K.S. Moon from Mikuni in Singapore, and Shaun Presland, founding chef of the original Sake in The Rocks, Sydney. Former food and beverage director of the acclaimed Masa omakase restaurant in New York, Markus Tschuschnig, will run the joint, which will feature a spectacular glass wall of wine designed by Wood Marsh Architecture.
For Lucas, whose daughter Holly was born in Tokyo, the obsession is partly personal. “Kisumé fulfils a dream that one day I could do justice to the beauty and elegance of Japanese food in my home town.”
Great British fry-up reinvented
A new breed of restaurateur is reinterpreting that great tradition, the fatty British fry-up. Cereal Killer Cafés in London and Birmingham are devoted to the best breakfast cereals of the world, while at Hackney hot spot, Rawduck, the breakfast menu starts with a nori rice bowl with cured salmon, avocado and poached egg. To drink, there are juices, nut milks and fermented drinks – even a hot drink of unpasteurised apple cider vinegar and heather honey.
Co-owner Clare Lattin says her obsession with gut health and its effect on wellbeing began about four years ago. She plans to add a picklery, fermenting workshop, bar and diner in Dalston in May.
Intelligent perfectionist
It's been a while between beautiful, expensive Australian chef cookbooks, but wait no more. Dan Hunter of the three-hatted Brae in Victoria's Otways region will publish his debut tome in May. Voted Australia's top chef by his peers in the 2016 Australia's Top Restaurants Awards, Hunter is an intelligent perfectionist who manages to turn the simplest of things – bread, oysters, parsnips, blood – into memorable dining moments.
Hunter's recipes are interspersed in the book with stories on the theme of place and landscape, and the power of growing your own food.
Venetian revival
"AMO is an island of Venetian mystery in the middle of the world's treasures," says designer and architect Philippe Starck of his recent collaboration with Massimiliano Alajmo, who in 2002, aged 28, was the youngest chef to snare three Michelin stars.
We'll allow Starck a little hyperbole – the theatrically designed AMO restaurant and bar is in the courtyard of the Fondaco dei Tedeschi, a magnificent 12th-century palazzo at the foot of the Rialto Bridge in the heart of Venice. Commissioned by the Benetton family in 2009, the Fondaco has been transformed into an opulent department store, with three galleries of sought-after luxury fashion brands, including Gucci and Bottega Veneta, linked by cardinal-red escalators and gold lifts. The restaurant itself is unmistakably Venetian, with its Murano glass, copper, dark marble and leather finishes – just the spot for a reviving spritz and Alajmo's trademark steamed pizza topped with shaved truffle.
A bar blossoms
The start of spring in Japan heralds the annual rite of hanami, or cherry blossom viewing, and with it the "mono no aware" sense of melancholy that arrives as the blossoms flutter to the ground, reflecting the ephemeral nature of life. This ritual inspired architect Ryohei Kanda to give RICCA, a small bar in Kagurazaka, Tokyo, a year-round ceiling of cherry blossoms fashioned from iridescent laser-cut holographic sheets. "I wanted everyone to feel that aesthetic sense the Japanese feel when faced with beauty," he says. "The brilliance and wonder, but also the evanescence of the blossoms, like a mirage." Now, for some at least, it's cherry blossom time, all the time.
