Ardross restaurant Piccolo Mondo has been acquired by Scott Bowman who has been busy for the past couple of weeks transforming the former Mediterranean-styled restaurant into one with a much more modern look and a five-star menu.
Ardross restaurant Piccolo Mondo has been acquired by Scott Bowman who has been busy for the past couple of weeks transforming the former Mediterranean-styled restaurant into one with a much more modern look and a five-star menu.
“We’ve completely changed the interior so now it’s quite modern and contemporary – we’ve replaced all the crockery and we’ve gotten rid of the stained glass doors,” he says
“We’ve got some local glass art that will reflect our corporate colour which is blue aurora, that’s our theme.”
Mr Bowman says the restaurant, now called Aurora, will provide fine dining food, a component of the food market he does not believe is past its use-by date.
“I think stuffy shirt fine dining is dying but the quality of the food is what we are after,” he says.
Mr Bowman has employed Alan Groom, who has worked in one of Perth’s finest fine dining restaurants as well as the El Questro resort, as the head chef.
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Meanwhile, the team next door to Aurora at Gala Restaurant are almost finished with renovations to their restaurant.
Gala, owned by former Windows chefs Hans Lang and Marianne Kempf, already has a splash of new colour to its exterior plus new signage.
There is more paint to go on the verandah before the job is complete and, aside from a bit of spring renovating, Mr Lang and Ms Kempf have also been trying out some home-grown recipes.
Originally from Germany they’ve been asked by a few regulars to cook up some home favourites. It has worked so well that they’ve made it a weekly specials menu.
A recent menu included goulaschsuppe (a spicy soup with beef, capsicum, and potatoes), and gebratenes Schweinshaxenfleisch auf Sauerkraut mit Kartoffelknoedel, which is of course roast pork knuckle on sauerkraut with potato dumplings.
The dishes, which change every week, are proving popular and considering Munich’s famous Oktoberfest festival is in mid swing Gusto thought it a great time to promote the traditional German fare on offer.
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Owners of Busselton’s famous The Goose Restaurant are on track to open their new ‘Goose’ restaurant in December.
Rhys Passmore sold his popular The Goose Restaurant, located on Prince Street (which is now known as Blend Restaurant) last year and has been busy constructing the new $1 million development, which overlooks Busselton’s jetty, and will keep the name The Goose.
The 700 square metre development incorporates a kiosk, bar and restaurant and should be open on December 1.
According to Mr Passmore, the new venue has already attracted lots of interest and bookings for December have been strong.
There are already a few weddings booked in, not to mention a very busy Christmas Day with lots of people putting their bookings in.
“The interest in it has been awesome”, Mr Passmore says.
“We haven’t done any advertising and we have 91 bookings for Christmas Day and lots of people ringing up from Perth and Busselton wanting to know when we open.”
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The developers of Zenith Apartments are on the hunt for a cafe operator to develop a cafe and/or a function and meeting room for the two ground floor areas of the new apartment buildings.
Mair Projects marketing and development manager Nicholas Wells, who is managing the development, says he wants an operator to either lease or buy one and-or both venues.
“We’ve got a separate title so it could be purchased separately,” he says.
“We want a cafe operator who wants to tap into the small conference and meeting market because there isn’t any space in West Perth for that type of activity.”
All the structural work has been completed to the heritage buildings that sit underneath 70 new apartments scheduled for completion at the end of this year.
“We’d like the venue to open concurrently. We’ve done all the hard work in terms of the pain that comes with heritage buildings, it still needs a fit out but the ducting is in and all of the engineering has been done,” Mr Wells says.
Zenith Apartments is located at 34 Kings Park Road.
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King Street Food and Wine is being sold.
Current owner Patrick De Leo was tight-lipped about the sale to Gusto this week but did confirm there would be new owners from about the middle of next month.
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WA chefs Don Hancey and Trudie Michels are off to the James Beard Foundation House in New York next month to cook up a feast for a special wine connoisseur dinner.
Leading culinary institution The James Beard Foundation typically attracts top chefs, foodies, and wine professionals from across the globe with just eight Australian chefs taking part in the event since it was established in 1985.
Some of the WA items to be showcased in the five-course menu are WA freshwater yabbies, Carnarvon scallops, and of course, Mr Hancey’s and Ms Michels very own Njoi olive oil.
The pair makes up two thirds of the company behind Njoi olive oils.
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Panache Gourmet Food and Wine has added dinner to its menu.
The cafe, which doubles as a provedore for WA gourmet goodies – particularly from Margaret River – has been open for breakfast and lunch since it launched in SubiCentro a couple of years ago.
However, the growing popularity of the area, and for its local provedore, has prompted the cafe to extend its food service through to dinner on Friday nights. It will open Saturday nights for dinner from mid October.
Panache head chef Sam Vladich-McKenzie has designed the menu using the best of Western Australian regional produce such as the ‘Dardanup beef fillet on a mushroom ragout tart’ or a ‘Paella with Mt Barker Chicken and Margaret River venison chorizo’.
Of course there’s a good range of WA wines on offer to pair with the menu items.
