Yiaga Opens in Fitzroy Gardens and Hugh Allen Isn’t Playing Small

Allen, best known for steering Vue de Monde into its current era, has finally stepped into his own spotlight. Yiaga has been years in the making and it shows in the way every ingredient, tile, chair and bottle has been chosen like it’s auditioning for a cult film. Rather than slotting into the city grid, the restaurant is tucked into the park itself, surrounded by elms, tourists, joggers and century-old gossip.

The building started life as tearooms in 1908, was later extended, burnt, repurposed and eventually abandoned. Most of Melbourne forgot it existed. Allen didn’t. He teamed up with architect John Wardle and turned the derelict pavilion into something that feels both new and inevitable. The bones stayed, the roof stayed, but everything else has been reimagined through the lens of Australian design. There is a single curved wall dressed in more than 13,000 handmade terracotta tiles, chosen to echo the bark of the surrounding trees. The open kitchen looks directly into greenery instead of a stainless-steel abyss.

Allen’s fixation on local craft runs deep. The dining chairs were custom-made by Jon Goulder. The pendant lighting is by Edward Linacre. The blackwood cellar, a Vivienne Wong cypress table, and objects by Adam Markowitz and Ross Thompson all feature without feeling like set dressing. Even the branding, created with Studio Ongarato, is built from collaged Australian flora that shifts with the seasons.

The food philosophy is equally specific. The opening menu pulls from Gippsland dairy, Queensland coral trout and a retired pasture-fed Wagyu breeding cow from David Blackmore’s farm. Wild wakame is dive-foraged off the Victorian coast and, naturally, ends up in dessert. Head chef Michael McAulay leads a kitchen geared for ongoing experimentation rather than a fixed formula. The drinks follow suit, with Master Sommelier Dorian Guillon designing an Australian-leaning pairing that includes a one-off collaboration with La Sirène: a mandarin barrel-aged saison the team hand-painted bottle by bottle. There is also a non-alcoholic pairing made fresh each day according to the dishes, not the marketing pitch.

Yiaga seats 44 people, including an eight-seat semi-private nook, and runs dinner Thursday to Saturday and lunch Friday to Sunday. The multi-course menu sits at $295 per person and bookings for the rest of 2025 are already open. January and February reservations drop on 1 November.

Allen and Wardle are already talking about monthly Yiaga Sessions: talks, workshops and gatherings with collaborators from food, art, agriculture and wherever else their curiosity points. If the restaurant is the starting gun, the long game is clearly bigger.

Melbourne has no shortage of openings, but Yiaga arrives with the confidence of something that belongs — not because it shouted the loudest, but because it built itself into the landscape and let the park introduce it.