no SMokE without firE - The Bridge Room

august 2012
For the proFessional cheF and restaurateur
Foodservicenews.com.au
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no SMokE without firE
how the Bridge room is setting the city
alight with it’s own brand of the new
All the Electrolux Appetite
17 24
for Excellence winners
Stunning alpaca Masterclass
with David Campbell

14 FOODSERVICENEWS.COM.AU AUGUST 2012
Ross lusted.
AFtER A WAVE OF NEW REStAURANtS
WIth SIMIlAR FORMAtS AND
FORMUlAS, ANthONy hUCkStEp
DISCOVERS thE BRIDgE ROOM IS
SEttINg thE CIty AlIght WIth It’S
OWN BRAND OF thE NEW.
PhotograPhy by Michele aboud.
No smoke without fire
Raw wagyu shouldeR, gRilled enoki mushRooms,
celtic sea salt, fResh hoRseRadish, soft pickled chilli.
When Ross and Sunny Lusted sent out subtle
smoke signals about returning home to Sydney the
news spread like wildfire.
After 10 years abroad living in seven different
countries, for the most part as consultants for Aman
Resorts, the two found themselves missing home.
Every time they visited Australia it drew them
closer and closer to its beating heart until finally
they gave in and took the path that lead to their new
restaurant – The Bridge Room in Sydney’s CBD.
This professional powerhouse couple are setting
quite a formidable agenda by building bridges rather
than burning them. They haven’t muscled their way
into the dining landscape, rather, they’ve
complimented and enhanced it.
One would think they’ve been here all along, but
with The Bridge Room the Lusted’s have gifted
Sydney a taste of its future by highlighting the
beauty of its past and embodying the cities relaxed
social construct in a sophisticated dining setting.
“We wanted to create a high end dining
experience without the formality of fine dining,”
says Sunny Lusted. “Sometimes it can feel very stiff
and turn into special occasion restaurants, and
people don’t really want to eat like that all the time.”
“We weren’t really feeling comfortable on our
arrival back to Sydney because a lot of the high end
restaurants had become degustation only, which is
fine, but not what we wanted to do,” says Sunny.
“We spent a lot of time in New York, San Francisco
and Europe looking at what made us feel
comfortable when we dine out,” adds Ross Lusted.
“Not so much the food, but the environment”.
“Restaurants that we were drawn to and liked
being in,” clarifies Sunny.
South African-born, Ross built the foundations of
his career at Darley Street Thai under David
Thompson for five years before working with Neil

Sunny LuSted.
dining
15
Perry at Wokpool, Qantas and finally as head chef at
Rockpool in the Rocks for five years.
During his tenure it won best restaurant.
He moved to the Park Hyatt Sydney where he first
met his now wife and business partner Sunny, who
was director of rooms at the very same venue.
The two then embarked on their 10-year global
odyssey which included taking resorts for the Aman
group from inception to outright success.
It proved the ideal grounding to create their very
own restaurant from the ground up.
“I’ve been eyeing this site for ten years,” explains
Ross of The Bridge Room.
The deco building wraps around the corner and,
now it is finally restored, is not unlike Edward
Hopper’s classic 1930s painting Nighthawks.
It was these deco qualities that first attracted
Ross to the site.
“I used to sit in traffic on my way to The Rocks. I
love architecture and I’d look at the building and I
knew it would make a great restaurant. But it was
an Indian restaurant for 20 years, and they had all
the lovely old deco windows covered up.”
However, the former Bank of New South Wales
1930s deco building wasn’t available, but fortunately
the site beneath it was. The Lusteds, with business
partner Leon Fink, Fink Group, approached the
landlord and strata through the downstairs site
delivering a brief on how they could bring the site
back to its former glory.
“Everyone was very excited because the curry was
permeating the whole building and it was very run
down. So from a building perspective I really felt we
were going to add value to the building.”
It worked, and the rest, as they say, is history.
Architect Nick Tobias was called upon and given
a brief of oak, felt, leather and ceramic all as part of a
detailed document explaining Ross’s vision.
“We wanted a residential feel,” explains Ross of
the beginning of the project.
“We didn’t want a restaurant architect just
stamping out another Sydney restaurant. We
wanted a residential feel to the space.”
Mirrors curve with the room and in the centre a
textural felt art piece adds a bow tie to the casual,
it is refreshingly confident food free from the
whimsical selfishness of food fadism. lusted’s food is
rooted in simple but defined combinations under the
watchful eye of exceptional application and delivery.
yet smart, space. Tables are furnished with
succulence instead of cut flowers. The need for linen
disposed by beautiful solid oak tables, set a
centimetre lower than industry standard to make
the diner feel more at home.
Autoban’s iconic Deer Chairs, felt place mats and
ceramics designed by Ross himself give the room an
earthy and comforting feel.
To get to the restaurant we see today though
called for in excess of a million dollar makeover –
not uncommon for restaurants of this calibre.
The windows were in disrepair and given the age
of the building, required a full heritage restoration.
Every single frame was hand-sanded by a heritage
expert, one window at a time.
Once he finished one, another heritage expert
would inspect the work for approval before they
could start on the next window.
“It took four months and it was supposed to take
five weeks,” says Ross.
It wasn’t just the windows that posed issues.
Being the old site of the Bank of New South Wales
it had French cut parquetry flooring which is longer
and narrower than the standard used today. In fact
the parquetry size doesn’t exist anymore.
One section of the floor was in good condition,
but a whole new section had to be relaid.
“We got a guy to match it, lay that section then we
were going to sand the whole floor so it all matched.
The industrial sanders proved too powerful and
ripped up the old parquetry floor.
“So we ended up having an entire custom-made
parquetry floor. Every piece has been custom cut
which you would never do by choice,” says Sunny.
“That was a $50,000 phone call,” sighs Ross.
“And we had quite a few $50,000 phone calls along
the way,” admits Sunny.
Expensive phone calls aside, the result is warm
honey coloured parquetry floor nourishing the
earthy tones of the furniture above it.
Apart from heritage listing requirements
preventing the removal of some structural columns,
Ross and Sunny gutted the space and re-configured
the kitchen and dining rooms.

16 FOODSERVICENEWS.COM.AU AUGUST 2012
DININg
RIgHT: Ash grilled
lAmb neck, August
vegetAbles,
oregAno.
BELOW: scAllops,
buttered corn,
osmAnthus flower
sAlt, biltong, burnt
butter, lemon thyme
leAves.
The restaurant, technically, shouldn’t work. At
least in terms of the spacial planning.
The chefs have no coolroom. Instead the kitchen
was cut short to provide six more seats in the dining
room – something Sunny insisted upon to ensure
the restaurant’s viability.
Six seats a night at an average spend of $125 over
a whole year. Well you do the maths, but for a slim
margin business like a restaurant it’s invaluable.
Instead of a coolroom the chefs rely on three
upright refrigerators filled daily with fresh produce.
“We are in a major city in the world, why can’t you
have two deliveries a day?” says Sunny.
“This is one of the really big things that we
realised,” adds Ross. “When we were in the states we
were getting 2-3 deliveries a week in Vegas because
we were in the middle of nowhere, but we are in
Sydney and we get deliveries every day. We don’t
ABOVE: burnt cArAmel creAm,
cAndied pAckhAm peArs,
pistAchio crumb, mint sAlAd,
purple bAsil.
have to have a huge amount of storage and stock.”
If they run out of stock they simply reprint the
menu. The system reduces food wastage and
promotes the use of all produce to the nth degree.
But the model creates its own problems.
“That also effects other things like your menu
format, you have to have a menu style that can cope
with re-printing. Everything connects. You can’t
plan anything in isolation,” says Sunny.
In the end the system works, and not only do the
extra seats add a much needed boost to bottom line,
it offers the dining space symmetry with each end of
the dining room anchored by a round table of six.
It’s the perfect canvas for Lusted’s creative palate
to express itself.
While Lusted’s food could be pigeonholed as
contemporary Australian, it leans heavily,
though not exclusively, to the nuances of Asian
THE BRIDgE ROOM
44 Bridge Street, Sydney
Online: thebridgeroom.com.au
Staff: 20
BOH: 10
FOH: 10
Seats: 66
Av covers: 60
Av spend: Lunch $100; dinner $125
Owners: Ross & Sunny Lusted, Fink Group
gM: Sunny Lusted
Executive chef: Ross Lusted
Restaurant manager: Zelka Pierce
Chef de cuisine: Stephen Moore
Sommelier: Joshua Renshaw
technique – especially in seasoning.
His food is layered and tactile. It has texture and
offers bursts of sunlight with each morsel.
It is refreshingly confident food free from the
whimsical selfishness of food fadism. Instead
Lusted’s food is rooted in simple but defined
combinations under the watchful eye of exceptional
application and delivery.
It is, quite frankly, food you want to eat.
Think gently smoked scallops, buttered corn,
osmanthus flower salt and a hat tip to his heritage
with slivers of biltong; then there are shimmery
sheets of raw wagyu shoulder entwined in grilled
enoki mushrooms enlivened by fresh horseradish
and pickled chilli; or firm but creamy King prawns
lathered in black bean, chilli and pork lardo.
While many chefs claim to be produce driven,
Lusted clearly delivers on this mandate.
The flavours and textures of his selective sourcing
underpin his technique and style.
At the heart of his kitchen and cuisine is a
purpose-built Japanese robata grill.
It gently smokes and grills at the same time which
means you’re not getting the normal carbonisation
as you would when grilling on iron bars.
“I love cooking with charcoal and cooking in
wood ovens,” explains Ross.
“Here I tend to use Asian seasonings and cook in
the Japanese style on the robata grill.
“When you sit down in a restaurant it is about
what you feel and that’s not only physically,
emotionally, what you taste; it’s everything.
“The brief we gave ourselves for the restaurant
was centred around the robata grill. You have layers
of flavour, texture, smoke and I’m cooking a very
different way than I have ever cooked because it is
driven by the grill and that smokiness it imparts.”
The Lusteds, with The Bridge Room, are proving
that where there’s smoke, there’s a restaurant firing
on all cylinders. •