Cotham Dining opens in former Hellenic Republic site in Kew

Cotham Dining, a bright new restaurant with local-meets-global cooking, has opened in the former Hellenic Republic site in Kew, vacant for nearly two years.

The owners, chefs Ayhan Erkoc and Federico Perez Lopez, say visiting Cotham will feel like dining at a big family table, with meat from the rotisserie and chargrill, whole fish and lots of shareable entrees defining the menu.

They bring plenty of experience to their first venue, as well as five years cooking together at Feast of Merit and Panama Dining Room, where they say they made a great team both creatively and practically.

Sticking to seasonal ingredients, at Cotham the pair will add and tweak dishes all the time, pooling ideas from Erkoc's Turkish background and Perez Lopez's Colombian roots, plus their combined CVs.

The summery opening line-up includes marinated tomatoes with stracciatella, porchetta with roasted grapes and kale, and charred corn and zucchini salad. Caramelised pineapple from the rotisserie is paired with rum cake and Sichuan pepper ice-cream for dessert. Wood-fired pizza will soon be added.

Weekend breakfast covers all the egg-smashed-avo-French toast essentials plus a porchetta benedict on arepas, the South American cornbread staple.

Ten "elegant and easy drinking" cocktails also follow the seasons, as in the Rhubarb Collins, which replaces lemon juice with a rhubarb-rosehip soda made in-house.

Hellenic Republic's murals are gone, replaced by brick, plants and white walls, but the distinctive thatched ceiling remains. There are 150 seats for those large family catch-ups while an events space upstairs can cater to 100 guests.

Open: breakfast Sat-Sun 8am-11.30am, lunch Thu-Sun 11.30am-3pm, dinner Wed-Sat 5.30pm-late.

26 Cotham Road, Kew, 03 9193 0550, cothamdining.com.au