LEGEND AWARD

PAYING TRIBUTE TO AN INSPIRATIONAL FIGURE ON SYDNEY’S FOOD SCENE THE APOLLO, CHO CHO SAN, LONGRAIN, SUBCONTINENTAL

SAM CHRISTIE

Back in 1999, Longrain showed us that Thai food needn’t be fast and furious. Along with co-founder Marty Boetz, Sam Christie opened up the elegance and sophistication of the cuisine to Sydney diners. As ex-sommelier of Tetsuya’s, he took on the challenge of pairing wine with Thai flavours. Spice-driven food is an integral part of Australia’s culinary tapestry and Christie helped shape the sommeliers of today with this one bold move. Longrain Melbourne followed in 2005, with Shortgrain opening up beneath Sydney’s Longrain six years later. But it wasn’t until 2012 when he took the plunge away from Thai and opened a Greek restaurant with childhood friend Jonathan Barthelmess: the Apollo. And then came Cho Cho San in 2014, another venture with Barthelmess, inspired by the izakayas of Tokyo. They brought in Nic Wong to run the kitchen (Christie’s taste in collaborators being one of his strengths) and arguably made their designer, George Livissianis, an industry name with his breathtaking Copenhagen-meets-Tokyo design for the interior. No surprise then that it won the Hospitality Design award at the Australian Interior Design Awards. Subcontinental soon followed: a restaurant inspired by Christie’s travels in India. The food has a South Indian bent – a cuisine sorely lacking on the inner-Sydney dining scene, until Christie came along. He seems like one of us, Christie: the travelling Aussie who comes home brimming with ideas. The difference is that he does something tangible with them. He makes exciting, seminal, consistently excellent restaurants. We’ve been enjoying his Zeitgeist-leading work for 16 years. If that’s not legendary, we don’t know what is.