Mezedes and suburban shopping centres make strange bedfellows, but Theo Kostoglou appears to have found a niche outside Melbourne’s traditional inner-city culinary belt. His Kouzina Modern Greek and Meze Bar restaurant restaurants have sprung up next to cinema multiplexes in Doncaster, Taylors Lakes and Knox.

When the 42-year-old chef<2011>restaurateur opened his fifth restaurant last year, he again chose a location in a dining and entertainment complex, this time on the Gold Coast’s waterfront Robina Promenade.

“People in the suburbs, they don’t want to always travel into the city, especially during the week, they’ll go somewhere closer to home,’ Kostoglou says.
Location, demographics and conveniences such as parking play a big role, he says, whether it’s Melbourne or Queensland.

“Robina has a strip of restaurants and cafes overlooking the water and state-of-the-art cinemas. It’s very local, family oriented. It’s not a tourist area,” Kontoglou explains.

“In Melbourne, Watergardens (Taylors Lakes) did the same thing. They opened a restaurant precinct next to the water. Everyone that comes there says ‘we can’t believe we’ve got something this good so close and we don’t have to go to the city or Carlton or Fitzroy’.

“Most suburbs now have good restaurants. I don’t think there’s a need for people to go into the city for food any more.”

Kostoglou grew up in Brunswick and Pascoe Vale and spent his early years in his family’s fish and chip shops in the northern suburbs. “I was out the back in what they called the factory, with the potatoes and the fish,” he recalls.

“Sometimes I’d go to the market with my dad before school. Back then you had to get the fish at auction and skin and fillet it.” By 16, Kostoglou had graduated to the grill.

After studying as an accountant, he travelled to Greece and worked for an uncle who ran two restaurants in Rhodes.

On day one, his uncle sent him into the kitchen. “I said ‘what do you mean, I’m going out the front with the manager… I don’t want to become a cook,’ Kostoglou recounts.

“He said ‘You need to know how to run the kitchen before you can run your own restaurant, otherwise your chefs are going to be running you’. It was prescient advice.

After two years, he returned to Melbourne and, at 26, he opened his first restaurant in Niddrie: Lindos.

“In that part of Melbourne there were no Greek restaurants; in the western suburbs you could count them on one hand. Everyone was saying ‘don’t open a Greek restaurant there, there are no Greeks’. I said ‘but Greeks eat it at home every day, I want to cook for other people’.”

The punt paid off. Lindos was full from day one.

Pleasing diners proved less of a challenge for the ambitious young owner-chef, than dealing with old-school Greek cooks. “They wouldn’t listen to me. I’m trying to be their boss and they’d say ‘what do you know?’ he laughs.

“They’d be standing there with a cigarette as they were cooking calamari or with a stubby next to the grill. Sometimes they’d wear aprons that hadn’t been washed for a week.”

Kostoglou left the kitchen clashes to run the floor but, frustrated by diner complaints, went back for a showdown. “They handed over their aprons and walked out of the kitchen thinking I couldn’t cook.”

Kostoglou has since spent most of his time in the kitchen, refining his brand of modern Greek cuisine. He eventually opened Mykonos (now rebranded as Kouzina) in Knox in 2004, and then, with Nuevo-Greek cuisine coming into vogue, in 2006 opened the first Kouzina restaurant in Southgate as a fine dining restaurant. But within a year, Kostoglou changed tack.

“We saw that the one in the suburbs was more successful every day, whereas this was more special occasion. I’d see my regulars once every three months whereas over there, I’d see them every week or fortnight.”

So he merged the best aspects of the two and opted for a simpler, accessible menu. “I kept the quality up, I decreased the pricing, I got rid of the table cloths and all fancy stuff that people had to pay for and made it more affordable. That’s been really successful and we expanded after that.”

The rollout has been impressive, with three restaurant openings in 18 months – Kouzina Doncaster in 2008 and Taylors Lakes and Robina last year. The menu is the same at each restaurant. Mezedes feature prominently, though Kostoglou says pushing the sharing concept has been a challenge.

“We do a deal on a Monday to promote the meze style of dining. It gives them a chance to try everything, including things like yigantes, which they wouldn’t have ordered.

“Our food is traditional with a bit of a twist. I call it fine casual, it’s not taverna food, it’s somewhere in the middle and I’ve made it more Australianised.”

Last year, Kostoglou moved to the Gold Coast with his wife Sharelle and three kids and now floats between restaurants, training chefs and maintaining consistency. Further expansion is on the cards – to Surfer’s Paradise and Brisbane, then to Asia and the Middle East.

Kouzina will host ‘The Flavours Of Greece’ Meze Table as part of Laiki Bank’s Flavours of Greece food and wine festival, presented by the Antipodes Festival (7pm, Tuesday 15 June; Kouzina, Westfield Doncaster, 619 Doncaster Road, Doncaster; Cost $55 (incl. Greek wines and beer); bookings 9840 6055)