MOVE over meat and three veg. Award-winning chefs are transforming retirement living meal times, helping serve up fine-dining dishes to gourmet-loving retirees.
In Sydney’s Rushcutters Bay, residents at Lendlease’s redeveloped Trebartha Apartments will be enjoying Middle Eastern flavours when popular North Bondi eatery Shuk moves in this year. The restaurant will take up residency on the ground floor of the building.
“Shuk is about creating a place where locals feel at home, while also being a destination for others with an unhurried, community feel,” said the owners of Shuk.
Lendlease's general manager of premium resorts, David Bowen, said the needs of current residents and retirees of the future are becoming more vibrant and diverse.
“We feel Shuk is the perfect fit for Trebartha Apartments, offering a unique dining experience to traditional retirement communities and it will complement the high-end upgrades to the rest of the development,” he said.
And at Aveo, former executive chef at Brisbane restaurant Il Centro, Gillian Hirst, is now executive chef at landmark community Aveo Newstead in Brisbane.
“Our focus is to implement a hospitality approach to cooking, developing sophisticated menus that offer residents delicious and nourishing meals,” she said.
The appointment of Ms Hirst is part of Aveo Group’s move to bring on board executive chefs to oversee restaurant-quality dining experiences at its in-community Select Dining restaurants.
The group’s national food services manager and executive chef John Casey said the company had transformed its food offerings with its Select Dining restaurants and ready-meal service Nutrition Select. “We know that many Australians have a misguided perception of retirement living food,” he said.
“We want to challenge that perception and show Australians that the food we offer across our communities nationally is as nutritious as it is delicious.”
In Victoria, internationally acclaimed chef and the man behind one of the world’s top restaurants, Attica, has designed an edible garden for The Grace Albert Park Lake, a new 18-storey vertical retirement village in South Melbourne set to open this year.
As a creative collaborator Ben Shewry is helping design a communal space where residents will tend to the pot plants and greenery or pick fresh ingredients to cook in their homes.
“I like the idea that retirees living in an inner-city apartment will now have access to freshly grown herbs and greens to use in their cooking,” he said.
