Latest news with #Pilu
Time Out
3 days ago
- Time Out
This stunning clifftop retreat overlooking Whale Beach offers some of the best views in Sydney
Perched high on the cliffs above Whale Beach is Jonah's, a sea-salt-sprayed boutique hotel and restaurant that has been standing strong since 1929. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows allow sunlight to stream into the bright-white dining room, and every table faces the ocean so there's not a bad seat in the house. And while this seaside classic is a bit of a drive away, Jonah's offers the kind of views that make you feel like you're on holiday. The menu, overseen by executive chef Rey Ambas – who's previously worked at Aqua Dining and Pilu – celebrates modern Australian cuisine with Italian flair. Guests can opt for the go-hard-or-go-home seafood platter, featuring hot and cold seafood served on a three-tiered stand and best enjoyed with a bottle of chilled Champagne. Or there's the three-course option, where you choose an entrée, main and dessert. Highlights include fresh, raw yellowfin tuna paired with apple, cucumber and vibrant dill oil; grilled king prawns with miso and orange butter, pickled fennel, grapefruit, wasabi mayo and pops of smoked salmon roe; capellini twirled with tomatoes, garlic, chilli and lemon shavings; and roast lamb with peas, marinated buffalo feta, balsamic currants and baby radish. If there's the option to add on plump, sweet and caramelised scallops bathed in burnt butter, do that. Dessert-wise, an orange blossom and vanilla semifreddo is paired with pomegranate, lime gel and pistachio ice cream; a banana and coconut soufflé comes with silky house-made gianduja ice cream; and there's a pineapple and lime 'Splice' featuring lime mousse, vanilla crumble and pineapple sorbet that's bright and zesty. The menu is backed up by a strong, encyclopaedia-like wine program curated by head sommelier Georgina Larsson (ex- Aria). The award-winning list features more than 1,600 wines, stored in two temperature-controlled wine cellars. Expect polished, warm and friendly fine-dining service – where you feel like a rockstar for a couple of hours. Some may say Jonah's feels a little dated. But with crisp wines, excellent service, crowd-pleasing food and those views, you'll still have a whale of a time. Time Out tip: After your meal, head out to Jonah's terrace balcony and enjoy a final Spritz before the journey home. Better yet, book a night here and keep the good times rolling. Find out more here. These are the best Italian restaurants in Sydney.
Sydney Morning Herald
24-07-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
Pilu chef Giovanni Pilu to open spin-off Italian restaurant at iconic Toaster building
It took more than two decades to tempt the duo behind northern beaches dining jewel Pilu at Freshwater across the Harbour Bridge. Now Giovanni Pilu and Marilyn Annecchini will open a spin-off restaurant at Circular Quay, with the project's inspiration going even further back in history. Flaminia, which opens in late November, takes its name from the ship that started the Australian migrant story for the husband-and-wife team who steer the chefs' hatted Pilu restaurant. 'It docked at Circular Quay,' Annecchini said of her mother's arrival from Italy aboard the Flaminia, in 1959. If she'd peered out the east-facing portholes, her first view of Sydney might've been the site where her daughter is now opening a restaurant, perched on the edge of Sydney Cove. Since Pilu launched in 2004, the owners of the award-winning restaurant have fielded several offers to expand to the Sydney CBD. They said it'd take something big, and the view from Q Dining at the Pullman Quay Grand Sydney Harbour matched that criteria, so they've struck a deal with the hotel to take over the restaurant space on level 2.
The Age
24-07-2025
- Business
- The Age
Pilu chef Giovanni Pilu to open spin-off Italian restaurant at iconic Toaster building
It took more than two decades to tempt the duo behind northern beaches dining jewel Pilu at Freshwater across the Harbour Bridge. Now Giovanni Pilu and Marilyn Annecchini will open a spin-off restaurant at Circular Quay, with the project's inspiration going even further back in history. Flaminia, which opens in late November, takes its name from the ship that started the Australian migrant story for the husband-and-wife team who steer the chefs' hatted Pilu restaurant. 'It docked at Circular Quay,' Annecchini said of her mother's arrival from Italy aboard the Flaminia, in 1959. If she'd peered out the east-facing portholes, her first view of Sydney might've been the site where her daughter is now opening a restaurant, perched on the edge of Sydney Cove. Since Pilu launched in 2004, the owners of the award-winning restaurant have fielded several offers to expand to the Sydney CBD. They said it'd take something big, and the view from Q Dining at the Pullman Quay Grand Sydney Harbour matched that criteria, so they've struck a deal with the hotel to take over the restaurant space on level 2.
Daily Telegraph
07-06-2025
- General
- Daily Telegraph
Robert Lewers: The man behind The Kiosk at Freshwater and the Queenscliff Tunnel
Don't miss out on the headlines from Manly. Followed categories will be added to My News. Many men and women have made their mark on the northern beaches but few of the structures for which they were responsible have survived the passage of the years. One exception is Robert David Lewers, who was responsible for the excavation of the Queenscliff Tunnel and the construction of the building that is now a restaurant called Pilu at Freshwater. Robert Lewers, who was born in Ireland in 1855, was the son of Rev Robert Lewers, who migrated from Ireland to Queensland in 1867, after which he was the minister of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Sydney from 1869 to 1873. In 1873 Rev Lewers moved to Victoria and was the minister at the Presbyterian Church at Sandhurst in Melbourne and then at Eaglehawk near Bendigo. Robert Lewers c1889. Photo Virginia Farley, Northern Beaches Library Rather than follow his father into the church, Robert Lewers became a banker and by 1880 he was living in Sydney and managing the Sussex St branch of the London Chartered Bank of Australia, which had been formed in 1852 by Duncan Dunbar, the owner of the Dunbar shipping line and of the ill-fated Dunbar. Along with many other banks in Australia, the London Chartered Bank of Australia collapsed in 1893 but, after being restructured, it reopened in August the same year as the London Bank of Australia. Lewers' first foray into the northern beaches was in 1887, when he bought two acres of land on the waterfront south of the southern end of Forty Baskets Beach, opposite Manly. In 1891, Lewers and another man, John Davison, bought nine acres at the southern end of Forty Baskets Beach, adjoining the land he had bought four years earlier, although Davison sold his share in the nine acres to Lewers five months later. Two years earlier, in 1889, Lewers had married Maria Propsting, who was 10 years his junior. Robert and Maria Lewers were members of the Religious Society of Friends – also known as the Quakers – a Christian denomination founded in England in the 17th century by people dissatisfied with the existing denominations of the Christian church. The house at Forty Baskets built by Robert Lewers. Photo Northern Beaches Library Maria grew up in Tasmania, where her father Henry was a businessman and for some years an alderman on Hobart City Council. He was also a Quaker and presumably it was from her father that Maria and then her husband took their beliefs. Although Lewers bought the nine acres at the southern end of Forty Baskets in 1891, the Lewers family didn't move to Forty Baskets until 1896. Lewers had a road wide enough for a horse and cart built down to the shoreline from near the end of present-day the upper part of Beatty St and also had a jetty built on the foreshore. There was already a timber house on the property, in which Lewers and his family lived while a much larger two-storey stone house was built closer to the shoreline using rock quarried on the site. The Kiosk c1920. Photo Northern Beaches Library Lewers was knowledgeable in the use of explosives – as was later seen to tragic effect – and in excavating stone by drilling. Lewers sold his property at Forty Baskets in 1903 and by 1904 the family was living at Wahroonga. By 1907 the Lewers were living at Manly and in 1908, Lewers bought a large piece of land behind the beach at Freshwater and built The Kiosk there. He also established a number of small cabins, or camps, that were rented by working men, as did several other men who owned land behind Freshwater Beach. As well as being the family home for a year, The Kiosk was a family business, although Lewers continued working for the London Bank of Australia. The Kiosk offered refreshments and afternoon teas, as well as overnight and weekend accommodation. After a year living in The Kiosk, the Lewers family lived in a house The Camp on the cliff edge at the end of Queenscliff Rd. The Camp, the Lewers family home at the end of Queenscliff Road, Queenscliff. Photo Northern Beaches Library The Freshwater Bay Postal Receiving Office operated from The Kiosk from 1909 to 1911 and, until the Harbord Literary Institute took over that role, The Kiosk served as Freshwater's social and cultural centre, providing a venue for afternoon tea parties, meetings and dances. It was also a favoured stopping-place for tourists on their way up the peninsula, often hosting groups of VIPs and even members of the visiting Imperial Japanese Navy in 1911. The Japanese were riding high on the back of their success against the Russian navy at the Battle of Tsushima six years earlier and would have been treated with some respect by the Australian authorities. In 1908 Lewers commissioned the construction of a tunnel through a section of Queenscliff Head that made access from Queenscliff Beach to Freshwater Beach difficult because the cliff in that section fell sheer to the water. Robert Lewers, far left, posing with D. Bevan, the man who excavated the tunnel in 1908. Photo Sonia Farley, Northern Beaches Library The completion of the tunnel was reported in the Evening News: 'An enterprising resident of Freshwater, Mr R.D. Lewers, has had constructed a tunnel through the rocks at the most difficult spot of what is known as Freshwater [Queenscliff] Head. This is recognised as the commencement of the construction of a walk from the Ocean Beach round to Freshwater. The southern end of the tunnel in 1982. Photo Manly Daily 'The tunnel is a little over 83 feet long, 6 feet 6 inches high and has been visited by hundreds of people, many of whom clamber round the rocks to the beach and others to favourite fishing spots. The work was carried out single-handedly by Mr D. Bevan and it took him three months to complete. 'To finish the walk, no more tunnelling will be required – the rest of the work to make the walk easy for pedestrians being mainly a matter of blasting the big rocks and smashing the debris to fill up the yawning crevices and making a level path.' The Kiosk in January 1980. Photo Manly Daily In 1910, Lewers began selling part of his land at Freshwater as the Lewers Sub-division. But on October 29, 1911, he took his own life in dramatic fashion by blowing his head off with gelignite and it was his daughter Aldwyth who discovered her father's mutilated body in one the camps. Lewers was only 56 years old at the time of his suicide. His wife Maria told the Coroner her late husband had always kept explosives on hand for use in blasting operations. She said he had been troubled by the pressures of his work at the bank and was always worried about the bank's customers, leading to insomnia. An examination of the books of the bank where Lewers worked found that everything was in order. The Kiosk, now called Pilu at Freshwater. Photo Manly Daily The Coroner returned a verdict of suicide while temporarily insane. When The Kiosk was sold in 1912 to Anton and Annie Loebel, the advertisement for the sale described it as 'a substantial structure of rusticated weatherboard, with six apartments and wide sleeping-out areas' – a modest description compared to the hyperbole of modern real estate agents. The Kiosk still sits in its prominent position at the southern end of Freshwater Beach but is now the restaurant called Pilu at Freshwater. Over the years the sides and roof of the tunnel through Queenscliff headland have been worn smooth by the elements, scouring the soft sandstone exposed by the tunnelling. As the process continues, as constant and unending as time itself, the tunnel's height and diameter has imperceptibly grown by the year. A monument that grows with the passage of time reflects well on those who toiled to create it.
