Three years in the making, diners can expect a fast-paced Middle Eastern in a tiered, greenery-lined brutalist space from one of the country’s most in-demand designers.
More than three years in the making, Anyday group will next week open Golden Avenue, its much-anticipated Middle Eastern restaurant in the Brisbane CBD.
Occupying a new build on Edward Street adjacent to the heritage-listed former Coal Board building – which Anyday also holds the lease to – Golden Avenue marks a return to the cuisine that helped define group co-owner and culinary director Ben Williamson’s early career, when he worked for Gulf Air in Bahrain, before returning to Australia to take up a head chef position with James Street icon Gerard’s Bistro.
It was during his time at Gerard’s that he and now Anyday co-owner Tyron Simon first bonded, and eventually began talking about going into business together.
“Back when we had Longtime [closed in late 2019 and rebranded on Ada Lane as Same Same] I was working six days a week, but when I wasn’t, I was going to see Ben at Gerard’s – they used to do an incredible breakfast on top of lunch and dinner,” Simon says. “And he was always on the pass. There was this real respect for his work ethic.
“And I think it was the same thing for him. On his rare night off he’d often come into Longtime, and I’d be working the door, and also serving wine and running food.
“It got to the point where he was looking at stepping out of Gerard’s and he said, ‘Would you ever considering doing a restaurant?’ That set the ball in motion.”
But Simon says the many diners who have been requesting Williamson return to Levantine food should expect something different to Williamson-era Gerard’s, with Golden Avenue being angled as a similar experience to the fast-paced and accessible Bianca and Same Same.
“It has that casualness to it,” Simon says. “While the execution of the food and beverage is really great, it’s not too formal. It’s a place that you can catch up with a friend or colleague over a few plates. It’s not meant to be a place with a lot of ceremony.”
Williamson wrote the menu with Anyday executive chef Adam Wolfers, who has his own celebrated background in Middle Eastern food, first in Sydney and then Brisbane (Wolfers took over the kitchen at Gerard’s Bistro after Williamson’s departure in late 2018), and Golden Avenue head chef Tim Yates.
It includes dishes such as charcoal-grilled king prawns with black lime and ghormeh sabzi (a Persian herb stew); kibbeh nayyeh with urfa chilli and sheep curd; wood-baked John Dory with preserved lemon; fried quail with Levantine chilli oil, carob molasses, verjus and za’atar; a 700-gram mechoui lamb shoulder with fermented daikon ajvar, mint and black cardamon salt; and luqaimat (Lebanese doughnuts) with saffron anglaise.
For drinks, there’s a 150-bottle wine list and a back bar that features 130 spirits.
The restaurant has been built in what was once the beer garden of Buffalo Bar and the Belgian Beer Cafe before it, and has been overseen by Jared Webb’s award-winning J.AR OFFICE.
Guests can expect a 500-square-metre tiered and greenery-lined dining space. The fundamentally brutalist design will feature skylights, a series of retractable roofs, and tiled and rendered surfaces. Materials include pink juparana granite, off-form concrete and stainless steel.
“While the execution of the food and beverage is really great, it’s not too formal. It’s a place that you can catch up with a friend or colleague over a few plates.”
Anyday co-owner Tyron Simon
“It was Jared’s idea to reskin the existing courtyard to look like a new build,” Simon says. “So you read it [and the Coal Board building] as two different buildings, which was really clever … The brief to Jared was more or less, ‘the hanging gardens of Babylon, but in your own handwriting’.”
Golden Avenue will open with an adjoining bar, GA, which will feature its own entrance and a separate snack menu.
Golden Avenue will be the seventh venue from Anyday, which has built a national reputation on the back of celebrated restaurants such as Agnes, Bianca, Same Same and Honto, as well as Agnes Bakery, which recently rebranded as Idle and moved from James Street to Merthyr Road in nearby New Farm.
But it’s the group’s first stab at the CBD.
“We [Simon and his wife and business partner, Bianca Marchi-Simon] used to live in the CBD,” Simon says. “We were living on Mary Street and I would go have a coffee and go to Folio Books, and stare at this Coal Board building.
“When [landlord] Tom Stack approached me about the Edward Street tenancy, he suggested food trucks. Which isn’t really what we do.
“But he asked us why we weren’t in the city. And we said, ‘We love the city, but in order for it to be successful, we’d need multiple venues to create a dining precinct.’
“He said, ‘Well, we’re owners of Coal Board.’ I said, ‘That’s the most beautiful building in Brisbane. If that’s on the table, let’s continue discussions.’ That was three-and-a-half years ago.”
Golden Avenue will open at 67 Edward Street, Brisbane, on Tuesday, August 26.
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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.
