Labour of love

3 min read

What a strange summer it was as we endured our second pandemic-era Christmas and New Year, made all the more challenging this year due to the outbreak of Omicron. I know many Aussies had their dreams of a long-awaited summer getaway dashed (or at least curtailed) thanks to this latest variant. We certainly live in interesting times!

Before COVID hit, every year I would jump on a plane on Boxing Day and head somewhere fabulous overseas for a good couple of weeks of R&R. Not surprisingly, this Boxing Day didn’t involve jetting off to another country, but, thankfully I did manage to sneak in a few days visiting beautiful Lord Howe Island for the first time. As spectacular as the scenery was, the trip wasn’t all leisure. I spent a good few hours on the phone each day to my teams back in Sydney, troubleshooting a bunch of challenges. Firstly we had to find a way to keep Glass Brasserie up and running even as many of our staff were forced into mandatory isolation. It wasn’t long before we had a huge number of booking cancellations too, so we made the tough decision to close the doors of Glass for a couple of weeks over the New Year to ride out the storm. I’m pleased to report, though, we used the time to re-do the entire timber floor of the restaurant and it’s now looking as shiny and new as ever. Bookings are now back open and the team and I would love to see you back for lunch or dinner soon!

I also took a couple of calls each day from my guys working tirelessly on getting the new Luke’s Kitchen ready for opening at the Kimpton Margot Hotel in Sydney. We’d all hoped the hotel and restaurant would be ready to launch in late January but, sadly, staffing challenges and supply chain dramas meant we had to push that date back. Excitingly, though, I can now report that we’ve settled on a revised opening date, Monday 14th February… Valentine’s Day! This whole exercise has been a mammoth labour of love for so many people involved, so I suppose the date is fitting!

On opening night, we’ll be hosting a very special Valentine’s dinner at Luke’s Kitchen which we’re calling “Celebrate Love In Margot’s World”. Click here to book.

I’d had a few people ask me why the Kimpton guys have chosen to call the hotel ‘Margot’. Well, they tell me it’s a tribute to the artistic women that played a leading role in shaping Australia's design scene in the 1930s. When you see the design of the hotel and restaurant it’ll make a lot more sense!! We’ll be uploading sneak peeks of the new spaces on social media, so make sure you’re following @lukeskitchensyd on Instagram and Facebook.

I can’t wait to show you around our new home for Luke’s Kitchen and also some of the hotel’s other food and beverage spaces that we’ve been working on too. You’re going to love them!

Here’s to labours of love… and, finally, seeing them come to fruition!

Luke