“I create venues I like and hope our prospects do to. I’m in all probability just a little OCD about this, however each buyer contact level: napkins, glassware, chairs, cutlery, menu, wine listing, service requirements, décor, even the design of the loos needs to be signed off by me.
“Don’t get me fallacious, I’m not a management freak, it’s merely {that a} good buyer expertise is all this stuff. I concern myself with the complete buyer expertise from the second they enter to the second they go away. It’s not simply concerning the meals or the booze. It’s about all the things.”
His is a novel imaginative and prescient. Which could clarify how he can get away with a gritty, American fashion dive bar – Joe’s Juice Joint – with out resorting to cringy clichés or it turning out like a Disneyland simulacrum of a tough residing, laborious liquor dive bar; which it’s, by the way in which. Had Joe’s been created by a design firm, one suspects it could have been precisely what Nolan detests: a tacky, half-baked theme bar.
“We take nice pleasure in the truth that Joe’s is a shitty bar,” he laughs.
From early beginnings 11 years in the past with La Cholita, Nolan has grown his eight-venue enterprise with unerring focus, which can account for him by no means having to close down a venue on account of lack of success. Though COVID wreaked havoc on his companies because it did throughout the hospitality business, Nolan has saved a core administration group and weathered the onslaught. Simply.
“There have been many sleepless nights,” Nolan stated. “With over 200 employees to pay each week, it was a problem to maintain the wheels turning.”
Nolan is one among Perth’s most profitable operators and one among a handful of WA hospitality titans – suppose Andy Freeman, Miles Hull, Adrian Fini – who rule the WA hospitality roost, however he’s in public phrases a minimum of, the least well-known. He bridles on the time period ‘excessive profile hospitality operator’. “Nah mate, I’m a low-profile operator which is simply the way in which I prefer it.”
The brand new restaurant might be Clint Nolan’s ninth institution.
Nolan “grew up within the hospitality enterprise sweeping, mopping and setting tables” within the pub the place his mom was the cook dinner.
“We’d go to the lodge after college and on the finish of the day, I’d go to sleep within the wine retailer. Mum would put us within the automobile on the finish of her shift and we’d head dwelling. I progressed to creating garlic bread … I fell in love with the enterprise and with cooking.”
Quick ahead 10 years and in 2004 the now certified and skilled chef opened Harvest in North Fremantle. Impulsively, everybody was speaking about this sensible younger chef referred to as Clint Nolan. Harvest received awards and acclaim. Nationwide shiny magazines gushed. Restaurant critics beloved his cooking. Getting a reservation grew to become a blood sport. It was the primary restaurant in WA to have its personal veggie patch.
“Once I opened Harvest, it was six years earlier than I took a vacation. There was no such factor as work-life stability again then. Not like now.”
He bought Harvest in 2013, two years after La Cholita was launched in Northbridge, however work-life stability went out the window as he opened an extra seven venues, all in Northbridge. La Condesa might be his ninth.
Why Subiaco? “The constructing was excellent for us and I feel Subi is just a little undercooked by way of range. It’s a thought of and sensible transfer for us.”
Nolan is being coy concerning the menu, however his website tells us “La Condesa is the place Tulum-meets-SoCal Mexican delicacies. Count on seasonal fruit cocktails, regionally sourced seafood and mouth-watering tacos.”
Not your old fashioned Mexican then. No greying, sloppy guacamole; sickly bland re-fried beans and jugs of nasty sangria. When you just like the spiky, zingy, contemporary flavours of Mexico, amplified by good elements, an epic drinks listing and a love of all issues Mexican, Clint Nolan’s new Subiaco bar would possibly simply be the ticket.
NOTE: La Condesa is anticipated to open mid-September at 483 Hay Avenue, Subiaco. It is going to be a seven day operation.
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Rob Broadfield seems fortnightly on Liam Bartlett’s 6PR Mornings Present.
