Melbourne, Australia — Momofuku Seiobo, the acclaimed restaurant
that David Chang opened in 2011 in a back hallway of the glitzy Star Casino in
Sydney, will close at the end of June.
اضافة اعلان
Chang said in an interview last week that when the restaurant
lease came up for renewal recently, he and his team decided it was time to
close. He made the decision with the chef, Paul Carmichael, and the general
manager, Kylie Javier Ashton. When asked for a specific reason, all three said
their goal was simply to end the life of the restaurant on a high note.
“We had many conversations about what the future of Seiobo would
look like,” Chang said. “The restaurant is their baby. When you eat there you
understand how personal this is for them. There is no Seiobo without them. They’ve
given so much to the restaurant — especially this year — and when they said
they wanted to go out on top, I supported them completely.”
The restaurant’s last service will be June 26. The staff, who
are employed by Star Casino, will have the option to be placed in other
restaurant jobs at the casino.
This is the third restaurant in the Momofuku empire to close
since the beginning of the pandemic; CCDC in Washington, D.C., and Nishi in New
York City shuttered in mid-2020.
When asked last week if there are financial reasons for Seiobo’s
closing, Javier Ashton said that wasn’t the situation: “If anything we have
created a business model that is a lot more efficient.”
After Seiobo closed for 18 weeks during Sydney’s pandemic
lockdown last year, the restaurant reopened in July with a smaller staff, fewer
customers and government-mandated capacity restrictions. But unlike some other
Australian restaurants, Momofuku Seiobo thrived.
“It’s probably one of our greatest successes, to have a hard
reset and be given the opportunity to create a restaurant from scratch,” Javier
Ashton said. “We created the restaurant that we were always working towards.”
Nonetheless, she said, the decision was made to close.
Momofuku Seiobo has won numerous accolades since its opening,
and particularly since Carmichael took over the kitchen. Under the direction of
its original head chef, Ben Greeno, the restaurant served internationally
inspired cuisine alongside Chang’s famous pork buns from the original Momofuku
restaurant in New York City.
In 2015, when Carmichael arrived in Sydney after working for
Chang at Má Pêche in New York, he slowly began to change the menu, adding
dishes with roots in his native Barbados and taking inspiration from the wider
Caribbean. In 2016, Gourmet Traveller — Australia’s premier glossy food and
travel magazine — named Seiobo its restaurant of the year. By the time I
reviewed the restaurant for The New York Times in 2018, Carmichael was
confident in his declaration that “this is a Caribbean restaurant.”
In 2020, I added Momofuku Seiobo to the World’s Best Restaurants
list that I compile for Food & Wine and Travel & Leisure magazines, one
of only three Australian restaurants that have made that list. Currently, I
consider it the country’s best restaurant.
But the importance of Seiobo goes beyond Australia. Having eaten
widely across the world, and particularly in the United States and the
Caribbean, I can say with some confidence that Carmichael is singular in his
meticulous and nuanced approach to the food of his homeland.
Osayi Endolyn, the American food writer and co-author of the
book “The Rise: Black Cooks and the Soul of American Food,” with Marcus
Samuelsson, ate at the Sydney restaurant in 2019. “As a Black person it is
incredibly rare to have a multicourse meal that resonates so deeply, to be
moved by a chef in such a personal way,” Endolyn said. “To see someone so
decisively and lovingly pay homage to his home region was thrilling.”
Carmichael, 44, feels that he came of age, personally and
professionally, while working at Seiobo. “It was the first time I really felt
comfortable in my own skin,” he said in an interview in early March. “Before
that I was always trying to appease and apologize. But here I was free of that,
and Dave gave me the freedom to do whatever I wanted.”
Chang gives all the credit for the restaurant’s success to
Carmichael and Javier Ashton. “What he and Kylie have built together at Seiobo
is all their own,” he said. “I’m in awe of the restaurant they’ve created and
how they’ve worked together to do it.”
Both Carmichael and Javier Ashton spoke about finding their home
at this iteration of Momofuku Seiobo. “As a Filipino-Australian kid growing up,
I loved food. I loved nice restaurants,” Javier Ashton said. “But I also never
felt like I fit. Now I feel like I fit, like we created a space where someone
like me could fit. I’m not sure I’m ever going to fit in anywhere else.”
Carmichael echoed those feelings. “Seiobo is the only place I
don’t feel like a weirdo,” he said.
For now, he is not sure of his next steps, though his preference
would be to stay in Sydney. “I love Sydney so much,” he said. “It’s really
become my home.”
Awards and accolades were never what drove him, he said, but
rather a respect for his culture and an attempt to connect with diners. “I’m sharing
a part of me with you,” Carmichael said. “I don’t know if people know or feel
that, but when you eat here I’m giving you a little piece of myself.”
Endolyn certainly seems to have gotten that message. “I don’t
know Paul personally,” she said, “but I know something about his heart through
his food. What he’s saying comes from his expertise and how he thinks of his
identity. But I can recognize magic. And that man is magic.”
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