Owners of some of the Queensland capital’s most popular restaurants are hoping for the best and preparing for the worst in the face of another natural disaster.
The pandemic. The 2022 floods. Now, a cyclone.
If nothing else, Brisbane’s popular riverside restaurants are getting used to adversity.
“It does feel like the pandemic,” Oscar Solomon said on Wednesday morning. Solomon is group development chef for The Apollo Group, which operates Yoko and Greca at Howard Smith Wharves.
“I was just talking to [back-of-house operations manager] Mitch [Muchow] and we were saying how we’ve literally jumped back into a COVID situation.”
It means restaurateurs more or less know what they have to do in the face of Tropical Cyclone Alfred, which, at the time of writing, is forecast to make landfall in Brisbane in the wee hours of Friday morning.
Yoko and Greca are now closed for at least two days.
“All of the outside areas of the restaurants have been packed inside and locked for security and safety,” Solomon said. “Outdoor electrical has been disconnected, and then it’s a matter of liaising with [Howard Smith Wharves management].
“It’s all based on what the state advice is, so everyone gets sent home for two days and we’ll then be reassessing every day. We’re hopeful that it’s going to be very quick and relatively painless, and we’re looking forward to the weekend and brushing it off, hopefully.”
Solomon says one of the major challenges is tending to the restaurants’ produce, given the likelihood of a power outage.
“The cool rooms have to be evenly dispersed [with produce] … if you have an airtight rubber-sealed cool room and lose power, it’s going to retain a safe temperature for a number of hours.
“The Wharves have two walk-in cool rooms per venue, so there’s only so much you can do … [but] food safety is obviously absolutely paramount.”
Still, after a near miss in 2022, when floodwater almost reached Yoko and Greca’s riverside deck, Solomon is relatively relaxed about the prospect of flooding.
“That’s not a major concern at the moment, but these things can turn on a dime, so all you can do is try your hardest to prepare as much as you can, but you’re at the mercy of the one above.”
Like Solomon, Will Cowper of Otto Ristorante at South Bank is less concerned with flooding than he is securing the restaurant and its produce.
“It’s just the unknown for us,” Cowper said earlier on Wednesday. “We’ve lost so many bookings. We’re down to two for dinner tomorrow [Thursday] night. We’ve a couple of big tables booked for tomorrow night, but it’s about the safety of our staff as much as anything.” (Cowper texted later to say that following the decision to suspend public transport, Otto will now close for at least Thursday and Friday.)
“We’ll be making the decision later today about the next few days about how far we take our preparation, but it would involve packing everything out of the service fridges and into the cool rooms. It’s a big job.
“We have an ice machine and the protocol is to cryo-pack everything into ice slurries [inside the cold rooms].”
Other than that, it’s a simple case of packing furniture and any loose outside items onto the restaurant floor and locking the doors.
Michael Tassis operates a number of venues on or near the river, including the newly opened Stilts and Mulga Bill’s, and had two restaurants, Massimo and Opa Bar, go underwater during the 2022 floods.
He describes facing another natural disaster as “nerve-racking” but says previous events led to the development of an action plan for his most at-risk venues.
“There are 15 staff per venue ready to go, plus a builder-plumber. That’s at Opa and Massimo.
“Our green light is if [Riverside Centre] puts the floodgates down, then we have an [eight-hour] window of opportunity to put everything in the car park – all the equipment, [furniture] and loose items, and then close it down.
“We already had a few shops closed today, and most of our shops will be closed by this afternoon. We might leave a couple open, like Fatcow [on James Street] and Rich & Rare [in West End], and maybe one of the [Queen’s Wharf] restaurants. Stilts, we’ll decide that this afternoon.
“But yeah, those restaurants will remain closed for two days, at least.
“Worst case, if something happens, I have a [refrigerated] seafood truck, and suppliers will take most of my goods into cold rooms.”
Tassis, like Cowper and Solomon, remains cautiously optimistic that his riverside venues won’t be affected by floodwater.
“At this stage, the river is low,” he said. “And it’s more the winds and potential for [flying debris] we’re worried about.”
Solomon said, though, that Brisbane operators are by now well versed in these kinds of events.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Everyone has a pretty tough skin and this just reiterates the bond we have in the industry. Everyone rallies together and looks after each other … Common sense wins out in these situations and that’s something I strongly believe a lot of hospitality people have.”
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Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-at-large at Broadsheet Brisbane, and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, the Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among many others.
