December Renovations

Due to open Monday January 12th, renovations are in full swing.
Situated in the sub-basement at 10 Bligh Street, directly below what will be the new Bar & Grill above, we currently have wires hanging out of ceilings, bags of render strewn across the floor, pipes, ladders and wheelie bins everywhere and a lot of guys in bright vests, steel capped boots and hard hats.
It’s an amazing thing to watch a restaurant come together. The bar is starting to take shape – the first real form within the room. It gives a true sense of space and understanding of how it is all going to fit. Last site visit – there were floor tiles being pondered over and paints being sampled.

While the builders are getting on with it on site, the crew that will soon be working there are pushing along back at Rockpool – Andy the chef is testing recipes, costing recipes, re-testing, kitchen planning – “where do all the woks go chef?”, organizing garbage pick ups and  cool rooms and how to fill a dry store full of Asian ingredients somewhere between Christmas and Chinese New year. Baci – the new restaurant manager is the ultimate multi-tasker (yay for women) – 2 ears on the phone, 10 fingers on the keyboard – glasses, plates, uniforms, staff, training manuals, coffee machines, event enquiries. It’s an exciting time for all and mildly exhausting to boot.

As I said, I don’t want to go spoiling any surprises, but there will be a terrific wine list – 100 wines only! Why only 100? To force us to make the very best decisions regarding the matching of the food. As a new wine arrives, one disappears.
You can expect plenty of chilli on the menu – we are using them fresh, dried, salted, pickled, brined and fermented – but it’s not all about heat. It’s about balance – and harmony.

More news coming soon….

Tags: Renovation Diary

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008 at 10:40 pm and is filed under Spice Temple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.