PIVOTING HARD
U T I T I N G
From take-home ramen packs to a drive-through pasta shop, these quick and clever pivots set high standards and paved the way for others.
SIMULATION SENPAI BY CHASE KOJIMA
This high-grade, masterfully made sushi spin-off from Sokyo head chef Chase Kojima gave Sydneysiders a chance to indulge in a luxury many missed while in lockdown. Kojima elegantly packed boxes with strips of fatty toro, sweet prawns, rich tongues of urchin and fleshy snapper, all draped over sushi rice. Maximising Kojima’s connections with specialist tuna dealers and his knowledge of the seafood markets, Simulation Senpai set new standards for takeaway meals. The luxe sushi boxes are still going strong with deliveries continuing to go out every Friday and Saturday.
LAGOON DINING EXPRESS
All about ease and convenience, Lagoon’s vacuum-sealed heat-andeat meals – from fiery dan dan noodles to rich butter chicken – have a shelf life of up to 15 days, a boon for when the inevitable day came each week when Melburnians just could not face cooking again. But it wasn’t all about shelf life – weekends were marked with daily specials. A fried chicken roll or a Lagoon fave, hot and sour shredded potato, gave the weekend meaning again.
SÁNG BY MABASA DELIVERY
Sáng By Mabasa pedalled hard, with manager Kenny Yong Soo Son doing home-delivery rounds on an electric bike. In the kitchen, his parents Jin Sun Son and Seung Kee Son made take-home batches of Korean specialties, including mandu (dumplings), jokbal (braised pig’s trotters) and kimchi jjigae, which were complemented by beautifully shot instructional videos (with bonus mukbang content) by Kenny and his partner Youmee Jeon. Proof that a tiny family-run restaurant can do very big things.
MR NILAND AT HOME
Josh Niland and the Fish Butchery team created meal kits that were the highlight of many Sydneysiders’ lockdown. One night it could be semolina spaghetti (made by Mitch Orr, formerly CicciaBella) with XO vongole; the next, tiger prawn and ocean-trout sausage jambalaya. Much like at his standalone venue Saint Peter, Niland executed the dishes with finesse and flair.
CHACO BAR’S TAKE-HOME RAMEN
As Sydney went into lockdown, our May issue cover star Chaco Bar was forced to shut its doors. But it wasn’t long before head chef Kieta Abe worked out how to reproduce his famous ramen from home. Freezing the broth and sending out ready-made noodles took some tinkering, but once mastered the ramen packs were some of the first and finest out there.
PIPIT’S VIETNAMESE POP-UP
Chef Ben Devlin and wife Yen Trinh’s regional NSW restaurant is typically known for its contemporarycoastal cuisine, but from May to August it transformed into a Vietnamese hotspot called Mr Trinh’s. The takeaway shop dished up Moreton Bay bug bánh mì, spanner crab rice porridge, and doughnuts filled with Vietnamese coffee custard. “It felt like such a stressful whirlwind at the time, but I did appreciate that when you have everything and nothing to lose, there’s real creative freedom,” says Trinh. “The importance and energy of local communities was also magnified.” The temporary Vietnamese takeaway was so loved by locals, it will return as a weekend pop-up in the future.
NAPIER QUARTER
This friendly neighbourhood wine bar in Fitzroy, Melbourne transformed into a homely takeaway wine store, providore and “paninoteca” where punters could pick up mortadella-loaded sandwiches, gorgeous galletes, lamb roasts, jars of pâté and vegetable soups, alongside groceries and pastries.
RUYI AT HOME
Sheng Fang and his wife Qian Qian Luo-Fang got the memo early: Melburnians in lockdown wanted comfort food. And nothing says comfort like a dumpling, so their suave, modern Chinese restaurant became a handmade dumpling machine pumping out excellent shao long bao, chilli wontons, pork and chive dumplings. An added bonus? The frozen dumplings being delivered by the charming owners themselves.
LEE HO FOOK AT HOME
Victor Liong twigged that traditional takeaway wouldn’t do his food justice, so he went the finish-at-home option. The crowning achievement is the Peking Duck for the Home pack; the dry-aged, malt-glazed, air-pumped Aylesbury duck, pancakes, and accompanying vegetables and sauces are simple to prepare but with just enough cooking to feel a sense of achievement.
LUNE DELIVERY
This ever-buzzy Melbourne croissanterie selected different suburbs to drive to each day to deliver freshly baked croissants and cruffins, so folks living outside of Lune’s five-kilometre radius could still enjoy the cult baked goods.
The lucky dip saw them visit more than 150 suburbs, from Coburg to Mt Eliza in the Lune-mobile.
“We wanted to create a shop that empowers customers to produce restaurant-quality meals at home.”
THE SUMMERTOWN ARISTOLOGIST VEGETABLE BOX
This Adelaide restaurant offered organic vegetable boxes from the beginning of lockdown. The shop-pivot also included bunches of freshly picked native flowers, wine and coffee. It was the perfect warm-up for its larder-meets-cellar door, which opened in June.
MARTA ROMAN BAKERY
It wasn’t unusual to see a queue snaking 20-plus metres from this Rushcutters Bay restaurantturned-Roman bakery. That’s because its sfogliatelle stuffed with prosciutto and herbed ricotta, mortadella- and provolone-filled panini and profiteroles with piped coffee cream had half of Sydney talking.
CAFE PACI’S FINNISH BAKERY
Pasi Pentänen has always been fiercely innovative, so it was no surprise that his iteration of a bakery was one of the most clever and forward-thinking in Sydney. Punters queued in neatly distanced lines to snap up Finnish pastries and playful bakery treats, like black pudding sausage rolls, carrot-and-licorice cakes (a fun take on a Cafe Paci dessert), and potato and molasses rye bread topped with gravlax.
AGNES BAKERY + BOTTLE SHOP
Chef Ben Williamson was slated to open his new Brisbane restaurant in March, but instead Agnes opened as a bakery and bottle shop. The temporary fixture sold smoked potato sourdough, fig and custard kouign-amanns, pumpkin and pork pizzette, and rosewater brûlée choux buns, alongside cheese, salumi, pickles and smoked butter.
SIXPENNY GENERAL STORE
For three months this fine-diner in Sydney’s Stanmore operated as a general store. Instead of preparing a modern-Australian tasting menu for 34 diners, Dan Puskas and his team baked cakes and loaves of sourdough, made jam, and filled bottles with Sixpenny chilli sauce to be sold to a never-ending line of customers that formed outside the restaurant each weekend. “We’d open orders at 5pm on Friday, and by Saturday morning there would be 90 or so orders. Some people spent $300 on cake!” recalls Puskas. “We weren’t expecting such a positive response.”
MARION’S COMMUNITY
Quick thinking kept Andrew McConnell’s Fitzroy wine bar powering through the pandemic via vegetable boxes (with recipe suggestions for signature dishes) and a collaboration with one of Melbourne’s best bakeries Baker Bleu that granted northsiders access to that raisin and cinnamon challah. Along with selling wine, bread, produce and take-home meals, Marion also dished up a much-needed sense of community that’s now taking roost at Morning Market, the permanent grocery store just a few doors from Marion.