Hello, JB. What’s for lunch today?

I’ll probably be skipping lunch because we’ve got an Olympus menu tasting later, but on a normal day it’s usually a chicken and hazelnut salad from Zinc down the road on MacLeay Street. Fennel, iceberg, poached chicken and apple. It’s really light and tasty. 

You’re a man with a lot going on – four restaurants across two states,The Apollo in Tokyo, two beautiful daughters, a lot of employees, a new venue poised to launch, how are you feeling right now?

I was really stressed about six months ago when there were a lot of things happening at once. When you add up all the trips I have to take – time out to go to Japan a couple of times a year, trips to Brisbane… planning everything around that means I have to really structure my year. If I don’t, things fill up and I can’t make anything happen. But now I feel excited, it’s under control now, so I’m pumped and happy. 

How are things going at The Apollo Tokyo?

It’s going so well, it’s the busiest it’s ever been. We’ve had longevity within our team and so I’m super happy. I love hearing about customers or people I bump into in Sydney going to the venue in Japan, it just happened yesterday, it’s such a good feeling. For me it’s so exciting when you get there, it’s at the top of a building and when the lift doors open I can smell The Apollo lamb instantly. That lamb is something I smell every single day of my life, but to have that intense scent hit me when I jump out of the lift in Tokyo gives me goosebumps every time. 

You’re about to open a new restaurant in Sydney for the first time in 10 years, Olympus at Wunderlich Lane in Surry Hills. Are you approached about new venues all the time? Why now, and why this site?

I’m always looking at stuff, but the timing has to be right. In this case, we were weighing up options for different things, and it just felt right. We’ve spent a lot of time over the last few years really investing into our back end so we can take on new projects responsibly and carefully. We’ve built a really solid foundation of amazing talent and systems, and that’s what’s put us at the stage where we are now, with the ability to take on something new. I felt good energy from [Toga’s managing director, Allan Vidor]. A lot of the time it’s the energy of the person for me, the founder of Brisbane’s Howard Smith Wharves [the home of Jonathan’s restaurants Greca and Yoko], Adam Flaskas, is the same. His energy is amazing. It was the same with Allan; we gelled. When I walk away from a meeting feeling like it’s not a corporate transaction I get drawn into it a bit more. 

In terms of a new space, we were looking for something that’s not the same, something that has points of difference. This restaurant does. It’s an amazing indoor/outdoor space, and is a size which allows for the kind of infrastructure we need to pull off a larger menu than we can normally execute. We can go wild and put all kinds of different things on and have more fun with the dishes – including tableside service aspects and a few offal dishes we normally couldn’t fit on a menu. We’ll have a massive vegetable and salad section of 15 or so dishes, and some of the produce we’ve secured will be exclusive to us. 

You have a lot of long-time collaborators across all your restaurants. When you press go on the new venue button, who’s the first person you call?

Designer George [Livissianis] and the accountant – our behind-the-scenes bloodline. I’m childhood friends with George, and we work so closely on everything together. I’ll talk through everything from concepts to menu tastings with him, he’s very involved, and this stems from our relationship and friendship. The restaurants are always an interpretation of me, and so I have to work with someone that really knows me. [George is a designer], but design, the feel, the product, the service, it all has to feel united. Everything has to be thought of as one – and he has a huge part in that. 

What then? How does the concept take shape for you? What do you draw on?

We set parameters of what we can do. Firstly it’s a budget – what it’s going to cost – then figure out if it will be feasible in that space. The concept is led by the location, and what we’re gearing up and ready to do. We always have a few concepts we would like to do, but it depends on the space on what would morph into that. 

Can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration behind Olympus?

I took my team on a couple of trips to Greece last year, and dug into the more unique parts of the Greek landscape. A lot of Greek restaurants are the same; tavernas based on the water somewhere. The same kind of seafood-led big Greek grill restaurant. I wanted to look at the other things, the food of Athens, the mountains and the regional spots that are still approachable and delicious, the kind of places we can put our own touch on. We spent most of our time in Athens, it’s so awesome at the moment. There are young people taking over the older generation and doing it with good style and attitude.

I’d love to chat to you about your approach to menu writing. Can you walk us through the steps you take to write your menus alongside your team?

We write out perimeters of what we want to do. For Olympus, we want to create that kind of Athenian taverna you always want to go to in Greece but you can never find, somewhere that ticks all the boxes, that’s the brief. From there we figure out what would be the ideal menu in that scenario and we write it all out. We’ll write so many dishes down, pick out ones we know we have down pat. We’re constantly having creative sessions with our team at Greca and The Apollo, and we have 15 years of experience in Greek food now, specials and things that have come off the menu. As we learn more about Greek food and get more confident and develop our style, it all evolves. It really is exciting as it’s an accumulation of many years of work and development. Then it all gets tweaked to the style of this new restaurant, and we envision how it will look on the table in this venue as opposed to The Apollo.

Is there anything you purposefully avoid throughout the process? Do you put any blinkers on?

First question is, is it delicious? If it’s something we have done before, we ask – is it better? The Same? Worse? We always ask “What’s the element of this dish where it’s just out of reach of a home cook?” Whether that’s an ingredient, a technique or form of execution. Then we always look for balance. I like to balance playing with flavour and texture, acid, salt, sweet, sour, I love contrast in the balance. Hot and cold, soft and textured. Every dish needs to have some sort of element of these contrasts. When you’re tasting it, you need to be wanting to go back for seconds, your mouth needs to salivate. We try to get all of this into each dish. 

You’re allergic to seafood, is that right? How do you navigate this when menu writing?

Yes. I have a mild tolerance to fermented things like anchovy and fish sauce, but anything else I can’t handle or eat. I’ve been lucky to work with a lot of my chefs for a long time, and so I know their palates. If someone is telling me it’s salty, I know and trust them, and ask them questions that will point me in the right direction. Generally for our seafood dishes I would stay away from doing something like a bouillabaisse on our menu, which needs extreme balance and time. I’d keep it more simple where I can taste a dressing or sauce and keep the cooking of the actual seafood simple but perfect. Having this restriction makes me a bit hungrier, makes me more curious. It also makes my senses more alert. For instance my smell for seafood is very strong, if there’s something not right in the kitchen I’m the first person to pick up on it.