As a little girl, Daniela Maiorano spent countless hours helping her grandmother roll gnocchi and shape sourdough at her family’s restaurant in Abruzzo, Italy. Named after her great-grandfather, Ristorante Clemente had a lasting influence on her, and her brothers and sisters as well. She is the eldest of six siblings, four of whom work as chefs at various restaurants around the world.
Along with her brother Attilio Maiorano as sous chef, Daniela brings her decades of experience in the kitchen to Lilium Lair in the coastal hamlet of Brunswick Heads in northern NSW. “We just grew up in the kitchen,” Daniela tells Broadsheet. “I’ve tried other things, but the only thing I know how to do really well is cooking. It’s in our DNA.”
Before coming to Australia, Daniela worked under one of Rome’s best chefs, Alessandro Miocchi, at Michelin-starred restaurant Retro Bottega, and at the famous bakery Bonci. After a visit (her brother married an Australian), she moved to the Byron Bay region in 2017.
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SIGN UPShe’s since worked at some of the area’s most notable venues, including pioneering farm-to-table restaurant Harvest, under Alanna Sapwell-Stone at Beach Byron Bay, and more recently at the just-closed Barrio in the arts and industry estate. “I realised the small size of this place gave me more possibilities to connect with people and do what I really want to do,” she says. “It was a heart choice.”
An offshoot of Lilium Love cafe at Wilsons Creek near Mullumbimby, where Daniela was previously hosting pop-up dinners, Lilium Lair has taken up the old Cadeau space on the main street in Brunswick Heads. The terracotta-tiled floors and hanging pendant lights remain, but the white walls have been painted black, with matching glossy tiles lining the bench where diners can sit on bar stools and watch the siblings in action in the open kitchen.
Daniela hopes to draw a younger, more alternative crowd with affordable, sustainable cuisine. The menu changes based on what’s available at the weekly farmers markets she visits in Byron, Mullumbimby and New Brighton, or sourced from producers such as The Paddock Project in Mullumbimby, Conscious Ground Organics in Myocum, and Wiccawood Organics in Georgica, near Nimbin. Free-range duck eggs served as part of the all-day breakfast menu come from Burrawong Gaian Farm in Bellingen, known for its ethical farming practices. “It’s a more sustainable way of cooking,” she says. “We also serve a lot of offal as we believe in using the entire animal.”
Daniela and Attilio have run pasta workshops throughout Australia, so you’ll pretty much always find homemade ravioli, tortellini or tagliatelle on the menu – but it isn’t purely Italian. “It’s the flavour and simplicity of Italy with fine-dining techniques we have learned around the world,” she says.
Other dishes include bread with bone marrow butter, a cheeseburger with wild venison, and slow-cooked beef croquettes with nettle pesto and crème fraîche made with Nimbin Valley Dairy cream.
Food is served alongside medicinal cocktails such as the Moonlight Martini – made with medicinal mushrooms and maple – and the Sexy Sour, which consists of locally made Brookie’s Gin, Davidson’s plum jam, schisandra and lime. The wine list is mostly natural, supplied by Giorgio De Maria Fun Wines and Byron Bay-based importer and distributor Lo-Fi, the team behind Daniela’s favourite local restaurant Bar Heather.
There’s live music on Thursday nights, when Daniela invites a local “mama” – from generations above her, and from a different cultural background – into the kitchen for the Amici Miei (Cooking with Friends) series. “They know how to cook better than us,” she says playfully.
Lilium Lair
2/26 Mullumbimbi Street, Brunswick Heads
Hours:
Daily 7am–2pm
Thu to Sat 5pm–9.30pm
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