Molonglo

Monster kitchen and bar pumped life into the arteries of Molonglo’s Hotel Hotel. Like any four-headed creature, she boasted multiple personalities, shifting from lucidity to debauchery from early morning to late at night. All the while serving local and seasonal produce for sharing.

Located in the Nishi Hotel Cinema Retail building of the NewActon precinct, Monster was the physical and metaphorical seed of Molonglo’s Hotel Hotel. A restaurant within a hotel that acts not as an isolated, functional drop-in space, but one which unapologetically lives and breathes public life; a living room to guests and visitors, which celebrated space and story within the building.

As Monster aged, it grew and told new stories. The addition of the Salon and Dining rooms drew on the rich and important chapter of Australian immigration – a reinterpretation of the suburban family rooms of immigrants coming to Australia during and post World War Two. The floor was a monolithic polished shattered terrazzo with hidalgoite green oxide seams, the armchairs a collection of works designed by the likes of Viennese furniture maker Paul Ernst Kafka (who himself emigrated in 1939). Together, the perspex mirrors and plexi-bead columns, the Greek icons, 1850s oil paintings and 1960s neon prints honoured the often eclectic and over-the-top adornment of many of the proud suburban lounges of the newly arrived. Together they spoke of domesticity and of how immigration can increase the textures, layers and dimensions of a place’s colonial fabric.