Page 48 - foodservice magazine April 2019

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PROFILE
PULLING OUT ALL THE STOPS
AS THE RESTAURANT MANAGER AND FOUNDING SOMMELIER AT MELBOURNE FINE DINER NAVI, CRISTINA FLORA’S WARMTH AND DEDICATION IS PART OF WHAT MAKES DINNER AT THIS RESTRAINED RESTAURANT SO SPECIAL. ALEKSANDRA BLISZCZYK MET WITH FLORA TO DISCUSS WHAT CAN MAKE OR BREAK A DINING EXPERIENCE.
What makes good service? To Cristina Flora, restaurant manager and sommelier at Melbourne fine diner Navi, the make-or-break moment is at the door. “It’s a nice start when you open the door and you smile. If you ruin that moment, the rest of the night is going to go not so well,” she says.
All diners crave attention, and Flora says it’s a server’s job to show it. Although at Navi the chefs take centre stage behind the pass of the open kitchen, “[diners] are the protagonists
in the restaurant,” she says. “Answer their questions and give them knowledge about their food and wine. If they want to remember what they ate, or what the ingredients were, or what the glass of red that they had was, write it down for them, send them an email when they go home, and ask them how their experience was.”
Navi is the first solo venture for ex-Paringa Estate head
chef Julian Hills. It opened
on a sleepy main road in Melbourne’s western suburbs in July 2018 to glowing reviews, and has been booked out ever since. Seating just 25,
Navi’s eight-course-only tasting menu reveres native Australian ingredients, and Australian clay – Hills hand-moulds all the restaurant’s crockery.
During service, each plate is brought to the table by one of the two floor staff, or by Hills himself. Flora pours the drinks, pairing Belgian beer with a pear and truffle dessert, and Japanese rice wine with beeswax-aged mackerel.
There are only six staff members at Navi. “Everyone does a very important job. It’s sort of a family,” Flora says proudly in a robust Italian accent.
Flora’s first front-of-house job was in fact with her family at her mum’s restaurant in Turin, a city in the north east of Italy known for white truffles, agnolotti, and Barolo wine. And wine truly runs in the locals’ veins. Brasato al Barolo is a signature dish of the area – a whole side of steak, usually chuck, marinated for
a day or more in Barolo before being slow-cooked in it too.
“My mum was a chef, so when I was finishing school I was going to see her and she would teach me how to make coffee.”
PHOTOGRAPHY: ED SLOANE