What do you do when your hot and very much in-demand new restaurant burns down a few weeks after opening?
Well, if you’re Matti Fallon and the team at Mornington’s Colt Dining, you spend a day grieving what was (including a vinyl record collection that numbered in the thousands), then you dust yourself off and start again, folding your unique origin story into the mythos of your next ventures.
“We bound together as a team,” says Matti, talking about himself plus business partners Lisa Prince and Paul Godard, head chef Michael Kharsas and manager-sommelier Gilles Allo Ausina.
“We were working together and we weren't mourning… We still had an awful lot of momentum off the back of what we had only just wrapped up.”
The Colt team had been assembled from various impressive local and far-flung locations, so Matti also felt a personal responsibility to keep everyone together. You could say the fire at Colt forged an even tighter, more passionate crew.
“And then we got this spot, and the landlord was happy to give us a good deal. So it was like, ‘All right, no time to stop. Let's go’. It was quite therapeutic in the sense that we all got to be around each other and keep creating.”
What they created was Mr Vincenzo’s, a kind of playful neighbourhood wine bar slash Italian-inspired seaside eatery.
“We didn’t want to take things too seriously,” explains Matti. “As much as you can run a restaurant and not take it seriously. It's always going to be serious. But yeah, it was more for all of us just to heal and have fun and get back on our feet.”
On the back wall of Mr Vincenzo’s is a photograph of a man diving into the ocean – ostensibly a vignette of summertime fun in the Mediterranean. But for those who know the story of Colt, it represents a hospitality team in full flight, unafraid to launch themselves into the next thing.
Now, a second venue is nearing completion: a 40–seat fine-dining restaurant, nestled at the rear of Mr Vincenzo’s, that will pay homage to the past in a slightly different way. The fitout will reference Colt’s fiery fate with black, burnt out features, for example.
Currently named Fend – a name that captures the grit the team had to summon after the fire – this new venture is ambitious and conceptual.
“This will be, like, next, next level,” says Matti. “We'd love to be a hatted venue.”
The place will be chef-focused, meaning front-of-house staff will be thin on the ground and chefs will be serving dishes directly to tables themselves, allowing the opportunity for storytelling around how particular menu items have been sourced from local fisherman and farmers. This approach ties in with Matti’s approach to hospitality.
“Hospitality doesn't mean we open the door and we wipe the tables down,” he says. “It's about bringing people into an experience where it's about them. We're privileged to have them.”
Keep an eye on what the team is up to via @mr_vincenzos
