Italian restaurant, cafe and gelataria Cibaria has been turning heads in Manly since January. Now it’s set to do the same north of the border.
Noosa Beach House won’t reopen on Hastings Street later this year.
That’s the bad news. The good news? It’s being replaced by a northern outpost from one of Sydney’s most respected modern restaurant groups.
In November, Maestro Hospitality will unveil Italian restaurant and bar Cibaria Noosa, following on from the successful opening of Cibaria Manly in January this year.
It will be the group’s first venue outside of Sydney. Maestro co-owner Anna Pavoni reckons it’s been more than 15 years in the making.
“Since the very first time we were invited to Noosa Food and Wine,” Pavoni says, laughing.
“The Sofitel Noosa is undergoing this huge transformation, and the idea of going to Noosa was always, like, ‘Wow, imagine that.’ I was really good friends with Danielle [Gjestland] from [Good Food regional restaurant of the year in 2013] Wasabi … so we used to spend a lot of time in Noosa and it’s always been a bit of a dream.”
It will also be the first time Maestro has repeated a concept. The group is known for cleverly tailoring its different restaurants to different localities in Sydney. But Cibaria’s clutch of elements – a restaurant, a cafe and gelateria, and a bar – were intended in part to become a centre for the community in Manly; in the Sofitel’s prominent open-air food and beverage space right in the guts of Hastings Street, you can imagine it doing the same for Noosa.
“[Manly] has become a community hub, and we love that,” Pavoni says. “We see someone at 7am for coffee and they’re back for dinner that night, or drinks in between, and their grandkids come by for gelato. It’s like a meeting spot in the town.
“We have seen what Cibaria can do for a town, and we believe that location [in Noosa] is the central hub of Hastings Street. It has so many similarities to where we are in Manly, and seeing what it has become … we are very excited to hope we can do even one tenth of that in Noosa.”
The other sweetener for Pavoni and husband, business partner and chef Alessandro Pavoni was a second partnership with the Laundy and Karedis families, who own both the MGallery hotel in Manly, Sydney that’s home to the original Cibaria, and Sofitel Noosa.
“We absolutely loved working with them in Manly,” Pavoni says. “They’re a family-run business like we are a family owned and run business. They’ve built it themselves and so there’s a level of pride. It doesn’t matter how big you get, it’s still your business.”
Pavoni says Cibaria Noosa will be similar to its Manly forerunner in trying to capture the feeling of an Italian piazza.
“You have all these things happening,” she says. “But it’s all centralised around this one space. That’s what Cibaria is about.”
“You have all these things happening, but it’s all centralised around this one space. That’s what Cibaria is about.”
Anna Pavoni
The venue will be a three in one. Out front will be walk-in only Bar Capri, which will serve a bar menu and a reduced a la carte menu. Beyond will be the trattoria, which will feature an antipasteria, cruderia, braceria, forneria, and spaghetteria. The third element will be Lily Pond Terrazza, which will extend past the hotel’s pool towards the lobby.
Overseeing the food at Cibaria Noosa will be head chef Lucas Bach, who has worked at a number of Maestro venues.
In charge of design is Mitchell & Eades, tasked with recreating the mood of the Manly original with plenty of “brick and terracotta,” Pavoni says. “It has that real Mediterranean feel, with pops of colour to keep it interesting. It definitely won’t be a [typical] ‘hotel restaurant’.”
Noosa, despite packing a lot of dining heft, is still a tourist town and comes with the challenges of seasonal business. But Pavoni reckons the parallels with Manly still hold true.
“There’s heaps of residential in Manly as well, but I would classify that as deeply seasonal,” she says. “But I almost can’t explain how Cibaria Manly has brought people together. It’s been astonishing. We’re not just a restaurant; it’s almost like the local pub. It’s been unbelievable, and I believe there is nowhere like that in Noosa.”
Cibaria Noosa will open in November.
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
Matt Shea is Food and Culture Editor at Brisbane Times. He is a former editor and editor-at-large at Broadsheet Brisbane, and has written for Escape, Qantas Magazine, the Guardian, Jetstar Magazine and SilverKris, among many others.
