It takes two to tango - and apparently for Chris Lucas to enter the Canberra hospitality scene.
The Melbourne restaurateur who is set to open his new Mediterranean venue Carlotta on Scotts Crossing next week, has announced that he will open a second location within the Canberra Centre precinct early next year.
Lucas told The Canberra Times that he will be taking over the space formerly occupied by Botswana Butchery, before it went into liquidation earlier this year. While details regarding the restaurant are still a tightly kept secret, he said it would be a French bistro with at least three private dining spaces.
"That will open mid-year, next year," Lucas said.
"We haven't got a name for it yet but it will be a French bistro. So between Carlotta and the French bistro we're creating 160/170 new jobs which is great for Canberra. But we're here for the long term."
Lucas added that the two venues were a sign of the commitment he and Lucas Restaurants were to the capital - a foodie destination that he has had his eye on for a while.
The restaurateur has been visiting the capital since he was a boy, and still has family living in Canberra. It's because of this that he has seen first-hand the growth and transformation the local food scene has had in recent years - inspiring him to enter the market ahead of other cities including Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
But Lucas didn't want to just enter with a Canberra version of one of his other restaurants - namely Chin Chin, which has locations in Melbourne and Sydney.
The restaurateur said he wanted to build a sense of community around the restaurant, both around diners and the other nearby venues.
"Canberra is a very sophisticated market, and I've dined here a lot of the restaurants, and I've gotten to know a lot of the restaurateurs and chefs and so forth, and it feels quite Melbourne to me," Lucas said.
"So I thought we'd be a good fit because you really do want to be able to have a market that also appreciates what you do.
"We want to be able to do interesting things here, we want to do them well, but we want them to also feel as if they're part of the local fabric.
"You've got to always have an intrinsic link with the environment, the village that you're in, or the town that you're in, or the city that you're in. It's important, and so for me, it was exciting."
While it may not seem like it in the heart of winter, Canberra's climate is actually part of the reason Lucas chose Mediterranean cuisine for his first foray into the capital's dining scene.
Beautifully braised meats, and hearty sauces feature heavily on the menu, perfect for cold winter nights. For warmer days, there's always the housemade pastas, the extensive cocktail and wine list enjoyed in the outdoor dining area, or the antipasti menu, featuring buffalo mozzarella shipped exclusively to Lucas Restaurants every week from Italian producer Podere dei Leoni.
But it's the Murano wood fired oven that you see in the restaurant's open kitchen as soon as you walk through the front doors.
"The centrepiece of the entire restaurant is a beautiful Murano oven that we brought in from Naples and we're going to be cooking over charcoal," Lucas said.
"It's very rustic in terms of the cooking methodology. But we'll touch on a little bit of Spanish, maybe a little bit of Greek. The menu will evolve.
"Because when you open a restaurant, it doesn't matter where you open a restaurant, as it settles in and thedining public will come here, and they'll tell us what they like and what they don't like. And so it'll be a changing menu, but I like the centrepiece being traditional rustic Italian food."
Carlotta opens at 20 Scotts Crossing, off of Bunda Street in Civic, on October 21.
