One of Brisbane’s best restaurants gets a cookbook

Books are hard, Simon Gloftis says. And he doesn’t mean cookbooks. Just, any book.

“I couldn’t even fathom the idea of how I would do a book. I struggle even now to read and write properly,” the restaurateur says disarmingly. “For me, it was a big deal. It wasn’t a matter of jotting down some ideas. It was like asking me to jump off a building.”

That’s one of the reasons it’s taken this long to produce the new Hellenika cookbook, which will be released October 1. The others? A pandemic and a couple of restaurant openings (Sushi Room and Sunshine, both in 2022).

“It’s been a process,” he says. “I almost gave up and then I was at a dinner and [co-writer] Marie[-Christine] Sourris’ husband was there and said, ‘Mate, finish this book. You need to do it.’ … And I thought, ‘OK, I’d better put my money where my mouth is’.”

The result is a 272-page cookbook that presents 110 recipes spanning the entire history of the popular James Street restaurant, split into 12 sections, from breakfast to mezedes, mains, desserts and even cocktails. Besides Sourris, the book features photography by Annika Kafcaloudis and styling by Stephanie Stamatis, both from Melbourne.

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Gloftis said it was the book’s publishing consultant, Julie Gibbs, who convinced him to make it so extensive.

“They said, ‘Simon, just own it. They’re yours. Go out there and give them everything. Don’t hide one thing’,” Gloftis says. “So that’s what we’ve done. We have the entire menu on there … all the tricks are in there.”

So yes, you can cook the restaurant’s iconic zucchini chips, slow-cooked lamb shoulder, and spanner crab kritharaki. The emphasis throughout, Gloftis says, is on how simple Mediterranean cooking can be.

“My motto from when we first opened Hellenika was, ‘If it doesn’t need that one extra ingredient, it doesn’t go in’,” Gloftis says.

But this is also about telling the narrative of Hellenika, from its beginnings at Nobby Beach perched above the Gold Coast Highway, to Theo Kampolis coming onboard as partner in 2017, to the restaurant’s expansion to Brisbane in 2018, where it made its home at The Calile Hotel.

The cookbook also forms one part of Hellenika’s 15-year celebrations (it actually opened 16 years ago on the Gold Coast, in March 2010) with the restaurant also hosting a pop-up at Miami Marketta in late October. That event sold out in a matter of days.

Hellenika wasn’t Gloftis’ only venue in those early Gold Coast years – there was The Fish House, which closed in 2020 after he sold the restaurant in 2016, and Nineteen at the Star, which he exited from in 2019. So, what made Hellenika stick, both for him and diners?

“There was very little shared dining when we opened,” he says. “There was no one doing lamb shoulder falling off the bone with that kind of quality … we were flying King George whiting up from Melbourne every day. And the Greek community [got right behind the restaurant]. You can’t fool them. That’s why it’s stood the test of time.

“I wanted to call the book The First 15 Years because I truly believe Hellenika is going nowhere. Hellenika’s story has a long way to play out.”