After stepping away from Coda, Tonka and Lollo at The W Hotel earlier this year, chef Adam D’Sylva has announced that he’ll be back in a kitchen by summer.
The Alphington local has just signed a deal to open an all-day restaurant and wine bar, plus an adjoining events space, in the suburb. It’s part of the YarraBend residential development, for which D’Sylva is the culinary curator.
The 80-seat venue, to be called Decca, will cherry-pick from the chef’s career cooking modern Australian dishes with a heavy skew towards Asia, but also draw on his Italian heritage. For now, he’s describing Decca as a bistro, the word affording him the freedom to draw on European cuisine beyond the boot.
“I’ll be touching on my whole repertoire,” he says. “I’m bringing a taste of what I do in the city to the ’burbs.”
The development, on the former Amcor Paper Mill site, will house about 4500 residents once complete. Decca will be located in the site’s retail and hospitality precinct, called The Bend, which borders a new park.
The chef is eager to create a place relaxed enough for locals to drop in on weeknights, with family-friendly touches such as kids’ pasta dishes.
The menu is a work in progress, but the site build has been completed. The fit-out will begin in September.
Other tenants at The Bend will be “high-calibre boutique eateries”, including cafes and cocktail bars.
The Bend, 31-39 Mills Boulevard, Alphington
This article was originally published in The Age