A wine bar, a beloved Middle Eastern eatery and venues linked to well-known chefs have decided to bow out.
After nearly five years, Lona Misa – the Latin-inspired 90-seater vegan restaurant inside boutique hotel Ovolo Melbourne in South Yarra – has served its last meal, following the end of chef Shannon Martinez’s (Smith + Daughters) contract with the venue in November.
“People think I owned Lona Misa. I didn’t. I was always a consultant,” says Martinez, insisting there’s no sense of failure around the closure.
Ovolo Hotels confirmed via a statement that the restaurant’s final service was on New Year’s Eve. A new venue, Bar Yarra, replaced Lona Misa on January 12, serving what the website describes as “classic comfort foods and regional favourites” such as a smash burger, roasted pumpkin ravioli, and steak frites.
Through her Lona Misa menus, Martinez celebrated her Latin roots in Josper-roasted vegan chicken with a spicy red mojo and chimichurri; moqueca, the Brazilian seafood stew; and castana de aguas, water chestnuts with fermented chilli and leche de tigre.
The venue was awarded one hat by The Age Good Food Guide between 2022 and 2024 but lost its hat in the most recent Guide, published last October.
Martinez says Ovolo has been shutting down its plant-based restaurants around the country one by one, after the group of hotels took a “veg pledge” for 365 days in 2022. Last March, Brisbane’s Za Za Ta closed, following Sydney’s Alibi restaurant in 2024.
“I had a great time,” Martinez says of her experience. “I learnt heaps working for a hotel, which is so different. There are so many moving parts and taking on all new challenges with a hotel team was great.”
A spokesperson for Ovolo says the hotel brand “has made a strategic decision to transition away from specialty restaurants and move towards casual all-day dining venues.
“As part of this shift, we have moved away from purely plant-based options and reintroduced protein to our menus to ensure a more inclusive approach to looking after our guests.”
Looking ahead, Martinez says, “I’m going to focus my energy on my own business. Smith & Daughters is marking 12 years in March”.
Meanwhile, plans for something new are being kept under wraps for now. “Big things are happening. And one thing’s for sure, it will still be fully vegan,” says Martinez.
After nine years, chef Charlie Carrington closed South Yarra’s Atlas Dining at the end of November to focus on Atlas Market, the meal-kit business he launched during the pandemic. “The lease was coming to an end so it was the right time to shift focus,” says Carrington.
When he opened the restaurant as a 22-year-old, the menu morphed every four months to serve a different cuisine.
“It was a wild concept, and we had the best time, but I’ve got a kid now and the hospitality lifestyle is pretty hard. I believe in the online space too: it’s Atlas 2.0. I’m putting my chef skills to the test, improving dishes and refining systems. It’s super positive and I have renewed energy.”
Brunswick restaurant Mankoushe has also closed, after 15 years of serving home-style Middle Eastern dishes such as baked potatoes with sumac and pizza with minced lamb. Brothers Jad and Hady Choucair have moved back to Lebanon and plan to open a restaurant in Beirut called Liberty.
“We hope all our Australian followers will be inspired to visit the Middle East,” they posted on Instagram.
And in Richmond, chef and restaurateur Cameron Williams is looking for a new site for Lene, the small restaurant he opened in 2021 and is now packing down. A rent increase made it impossible for his smart European wine bar and dining room to persist any longer.
“We’ve been looking for a site for 12 months, and I’m still hoping to find a place in Fitzroy, Collingwood or Abbotsford,” he says. “Hospitality is hard, and Bridge Road is lacking energy.”
When he finds a spot, the new iteration will be “smaller and sharper, less than 30 seats, more intimate and up a few notches”.
Finally, for any Smith Street spice fans who have been wondering what’s happening to Mischa Tropp’s Toddy Shop, Good Food can reveal that he will not reopen Fitzroy’s South Indian hangout after it closed for a summer break in mid-December.
“I’ve realised I don’t have the bandwidth to manage two sites [the other being hatted Kolkata Cricket Club] in the way I want to,” says Tropp. “I worked hard in December and when I got to my break, I decided I need to reduce how much I’m working.”
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