Famous Australian Chef Looking at NY Restaurant Spaces

Peter Evans, an Australian chef with four restaurants and two books to his name, not to mention the daily television cooking show he hosts back home, is looking at restaurant spaces in the city. “We have friends over here with restaurants,” he told us yesterday, “so we’re going to speak with them about the economy and get their thoughts. It all depends on timing, but we’re here to have a proper look.”

Evans is in town for G’Day Australia Week, and cooked at a dinner at the Waldorf Astoria to benefit the preservation of Pungalina, a large expanse of outback in Australia’s Northern Territory. While here, Evans has also been on a fact-finding tear through the city’s restaurant landscape, having already visited Per Se, Fatty Crab, Sushi Yasuda, Public, Otto, and PDT. The chef hopes to eat at Momofuku Ssam before he flies home.

“All the restaurants have been standout,” said Evans. “My brother is over here with me; we’ve been in business together for 16 years now. We’ve opened five restaurants together, and four are still open. He finds the spots. Last night we were going to dinner at Boqueria Soho, and my brother realized that he had looked at the space a while back. He just couldn’t work out what to do with that front area, so it was funny to see it again.”

At his restaurants, Evans mainly cooks fresh fish, vegetables, and pizzas. The chef has served kangaroo meat in the past, which is sustainable and high in protein. On the subject of Australian food misconceptions however, Evans laughed. “We don’t even know what the Outback Steakhouse is in Australia,” he said. “There’s no such thing, basically. People in Australia don’t eat that kind of food. It’s a gimmick, and it’s an unfortunate thing.”