Rebecca Yazbek Ushers In a New Era at Florentino

“You open something like Reine, you get a lot of phone calls and questions and opportunities and offers,” Rebecca Yazbek says. The CEO and founder of Edition Hospitality (formerly Nomad Group) is sitting in Florentino Dining Room, one of five restaurants at the top end of Bourke Street she officially purchased from the Grossi family in late 2025.

This is the first new venture for the group, also behind Nomad in Sydney and Melbourne, since winter 2023, when Reine & La Rue – the grand brasserie in the former Melbourne Stock Exchange’s 135-year-old Cathedral Room and neighbouring wine bar – opened.

“Our group has grown quite slowly because not much resonates with me. I don’t really want to do something just for the sake of growth or for the dollars. We want the quality piece. And we want the legacy and [to have an] impact on the cities that we operate in. When this came up, it was a pretty quick ‘I’m interested’.” 

Yazbek is now the fifth owner of the historical Bourke Street restaurant, one of Melbourne’’s oldest. She’s ushering in a new era after the Grossi family’s 26-year run, but is conscious of maintaining the restaurant’s legacy. 

“Part of the refresh is looking backwards. You don’t take this on to pull it down and make it bright and shiny,” she says. “There’s a legacy here, there’s a history and we want to be a part of it. We’ve kept the structure of the menu, but the fonts are different, the menu, the logos are different, the actual food is different – but it’s still not so far away from the original.” 

For now, the group is focused on Cellar Bar, the upstairs space Florentino Dining Room and Cafe Florentino (the venue most recently known as Grossi Grill, now returned to its original name). Instrumental to the refresh is culinary director Michael Greenlaw, a former Ritz-Carlton Melbourne executive chef who had been with Edition for some months before the idea of taking over Florentino was first raised. Across the five venues he oversees a 35-chef kitchen team made up of chefs from the former Florentino iteration and across other Edition venues.

Chefs are still handmaking pasta and gnocchi and the equipment is the same, but “we’ve really worked on how we can influence those recipes and techniques and bring it up to 2026,” Greenlaw says. The menu still has “that authentic Italian feeling, through that Melbourne lens”, but the team has also “taken produce to the next level” by leveraging the group’s pre-existing relationships with suppliers such as Ramarro Farm. 

At Cellar Bar, for example, the pumpkin tortellini has been updated with more brown butter, Ramarro Farm herbs and local hazelnuts. And the team has put its own spin on the bolognaise recipe and lasagne. 

For Yazbek, it was important for the space and menu to be approachable. The playlist isn’t exclusively Italian anymore, and she wants the rooms to be louder and darker. “I love fun dining, not fine dining,” she says. For her, Greenlaw’s new ravioli doppio – filled with fontina on one side and a chiffonade of erbette from Day's Walk Farm on the other – exemplifies that. “I think anyone could eat that dish and enjoy it. It’s very refined and elegant, but it’s also approachable. They’re not flavours that are challenging to people, and it’s just good Italian cooking.”

The restaurateur has had incredible success with her other venues, but this is her first time taking over a pre-existing restaurant. “It’s an interesting challenge. And it’s different. It’s not – and I don’t want to say this lightly – like just opening another new restaurant. It was like, ‘What can we do with something that has its own footprint and imprint, and how do we evolve that for a 2026 audience to a 2046 audience?’”

She hopes to soon take advantage of the 24-hour liquor licence and introduce late-night dining, but for now is focused on making sure the three veneues remain a cornerstone of the city. “This town is very loved by its home occupants,” says Sydneysider Yazbek. “If we can make people fall in love with Florentino again, remind them that we’re here and that it’s part of their tapestry, then it’s a very satisfying feeling for us.”

Florentino, Cafe Florentino and Cellar Bar
80 Bourke Street, Melbourne
(03) 9021 5242

Florentino hours:
Mon, Tue & Sat 5.30pm–9.30pm
Wed to Fri midday–2.30pm; 5.30pm–9.30pm

Cafe Florentino hours:
Mon to Sat midday–2.30pm; 5pm–late

Cellar Bar hours:
Mon to Sat 11am–late

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