Thirty is young to open any restaurant, and especially a fine diner. Though not when you’re Hugh Allen, who landed the top job at Vue de Monde in 2019, aged 23.

Today the precocious chef is making history again, serving the first guests at Yiaga, his debut restaurant and one of the most striking Melbourne has ever seen. The project bill is private, but this former commercial construction estimator reckons overhauling the former Fitzroy Gardens Pavilion to this level would have cost $10 million or more.

Renowned architect John Wardle led the build, which from outside the entrance feels slightly like the reverse of a stage set – something unfinished and not meant to be seen. The narrow bricks were laid vertically, with mortar squidging out the gaps in misshapen blobs. Salada biscuits and Vegemite come to mind.

This intentional messiness only makes the reveal of the tonal, womb-like interior more special. It features an undulating wall on a return loop back to the entrance, clad with 13,000 ridged ochre tiles extruded here in Melbourne. On a straight, flat wall, one tile shape suffices. Here, Wardle had to design various modular shapes himself, to negotiate every specific bulge, bend, dip and radius. The wall’s organic curves hide several two-seat booths, each with a remarkable sense of privacy in an open-plan restaurant with just 44 seats. The concrete floor does a convincing imitation of outback dirt, thanks to its iron oxide tinting.

“John is one of Australia’s most famous architects, and he’s never done a restaurant. I wanted that. I didn’t want anyone that had done a restaurant before, because I didn’t want it to look like someone else’s restaurant,” says Allen, who’s been longing for his own place since starting his apprenticeship at Rockpool Group, aged 16.

Allen felt he was ready by 2018, after two years working at Noma in Copenhagen and its pop-ups in Sydney and Tulum. He returned home to start scouting sites. Some had potential, but it wasn’t until a lockdown-era walk that Allen discovered this one – the one – and submitted a tender to the City of Melbourne in partnership with the same Singaporean family that owns Vue.

“I lived and worked overseas,” he says. “A lot of my favourite restaurants and experiences I had, the things I remember weren’t necessarily the wine they served or the food. It was really about the beautiful setting.”

Yiaga definitely has it going on. Conversation is low. Fleetwood Mac and Penguin Cafe Orchestra are on the stereo. Walkers amble through the century-old elms outside, their chit-chat inaudible. There’s a real sense of serenity; of cocoon-like insulation from “out there”. You’ll have two to four hours to enjoy this atmosphere as you work through 14 courses at lunch or dinner ($295). Vegetarians can be accommodated. Vegans, not yet. The man running the show day-to-day is head chef Michael McAulay, who moved out here specifically to work with Allen after the pair met at Noma.

Echoing the choice of architect, almost everything eaten off, and with, was made by Australian artisans, many of whom have never worked with restaurants before. The custom Jon Goulder chairs are made from Tasmanian blackwood and the same leather that goes into RM Williams boots. Ditto the matching dining tables and their lipped, knee-high companions, designed to hold bags off the ground. The irregular sunset-yellow water glasses are hand-blown in Adelaide by Alexandra Hirst and hand-etched with native flora. And the chunky grey vases on each table are the work of Tasmanian ceramicists Peta and Ben Richardson, who only fire up their kiln once a year.

Each meal begins with a dish of native sea parsley found at the mouth of the Snowy River, blended with olive oil and churned into an icy, refreshing surprise. Then it might be onto a Wagyu sanga. Yiaga sources 100 per cent grass-fed retired breeders from Blackmore Wagyu. The meat is sliced a few millimetres thick, briefly cured, heated on a salt rock, then whacked in a steamed spelt bun with wild garlic, brassicas and green ants. One bite, down the hatch.

Later, coral trout sourced from Queensland ikejime -practicing fisherman Chris Bolton is aged, slowly cooked to confit and finished on a charcoal barbeque. It’s sauced up with a combo of fish stock, mango, sunrise lime, blood lime and guajillo chilli oil (a final touch suggested by one the chefs, who’s Mexican). “We love the dish because it’s a real collaboration from the team,” Allen says. “It started so far away from where it’s ended up.”

Main course, which feels like his baby, is comparatively simple. Two barbequed kangaroo chops, a brown sauce of maitake (hen of the woods) mushroom, a crimson sauce starring two tingly, numbing natives: dorrigo pepper and pepperberry. At dessert, invasive wakame seaweed is braised in sweetened stock and wrapped around a frozen parfait-like sphere, where one side is strawberries and the other is fresh Gippsland cream.

The rest, you’ll find out for yourself. But Allen’s keen to clarify: this isn’t Vue de Monde. “It’s been there for 25 years and it’s got very classical foundations. You know, things like the cheese trolley, the chocolate souffle and the traditional champagne service at the start,” he says. “It’s had multiple chefs run it and when you’re the chef, you’re sort of custodian of it. You have to stay in the box a bit, because there are guests who’ve been coming for 25 years and they love and expect certain things.”

Likewise, at Yiaga, Dorian Guillon – Vue’s wine director and one of just 279 qualified master sommeliers worldwide – is playing a bit looser. Grange is still in the mix, but Aussie bottles also come from the likes of Cullen, Jamsheed and Bandicoot Run. Any of these three names could appear in the optional beverage pairing ($195), alongside the likes of Australian sake, mead, a barrel-aged mandarin saison made for Yiaga at La Sirene, plus interesting non-alcs like a citrusy koji ferment and a fizzy fermented brioche drink with some of champagne’s classic bread-y, apple-y characters. There’s also the option to go with premium wines only ($395) or non-alcoholic only ($120).

The fit-out, the food, these drinks. It’s high-flying stuff, especially considering the lease term is just 15 years, at which point the City of Melbourne will hold another tenant tender process. By that time Allen will be in his 40s, still with decades left to give. One imagines the chef and his business partners could win another term then with ease, should they want to. But it’s not certain.

“It’s a weird dynamic to invest so much in a place we don’t actually own,” Allen says. “I look forward to, in 30 years or whatever, knowing that all the effort we went into making everything right in Australia, with all the materials from Australia, we can say, ‘We had a part in the history of that park.’ I’m proud that Melbourne will have this.”

Yiaga

Fitzroy Gardens, East Melbourne (near the centre, where all the paths converge)

(03) 9691 3800

Hours

Thu 6pm–11pm

Fri & Sat 12pm–4pm & 6pm–11pm

Sun 12pm–4pm

yiaga.au

@yiaga.au