Most people move to the Northern Rivers for a sea-change or even a tree-change, but restaurateur Patricia Costello has moved here to make her mark on the hospitality scene – oh, and also to join her sister, academic and writer Moya Costello on her verandah with the occasional glass of wine, writes Sam Carberry.
A veteran in the hospitality industry, Patricia has worked in many prestigious and acclaimed restaurants – Otto Ristorante in Woolloomooloo and The Centennial Hotel in Woollahra being only two of them. During those years, she worked alongside many notable chefs including Damien Pignolet, and most notably, Matt Moran.
“It wasn’t an obvious route into hospitality,” Patricia says. She was studying for a degree at the University of NSW while working as a bartender and waitress at the prestigious Paddington Hotel. She realised the hospitality industry was for her. “It was thrilling actually,” she says. “I had a sense of attachment to this industry…”
It was the beginning of a high-profile career. Not everyone gets the chance to serve celebrities such as Judy Davis, Russell Crowe, Sam Shepherd and Tobey Maguire. Working in some of Sydney’s most famous restaurants also gave Patricia the chance to meet and serve Whitlam, Keating, Abbott and Turnbull.
“One of my most memorable experiences was the day Baz Luhrmann – who was a regular at Zanzibar in King’s Cross – approached staff with the prospect of bringing Paul Keating to the restaurant,” Patricia recalls. “In late 1991, the Labor Party was celebrating when Keating was freshly elected as the 24th Prime Minister of Australia. Luhrmann brought Keating in from the election and they had security guards that came in and checked everything. It was very low-key for a new Prime Minister.”
But after a hectic couple of decades Patricia decided it was time for a change of pace, and the Northern Rivers stood out to her for various reasons. “It’s a pretty area, and my family is here,” she says. “I’d like to get into hospitality up here and see what the area is about. I’ve already encountered a number of great wine lists at several good restaurants with interesting local food and friendly service. And I have to be near a beach!”
Moya, like Patricia, is fond of eating and drinking. They both grew up with an interesting association to alcohol. Their father was a lover of beer their mother a lover of wine and cocktails, and thus the sisters developed a curiosity for wine tasting and mixing cocktails. Patricia reminisces that when they grew older, at any opportune family gathering: “Christmas Day lunches and birthdays where we’d all start to bring something special, we’d bring a new bottle of wine to try. Because I was in the industry I would bring French champagne.”
After their father had passed and their mother’s health was beginning to deteriorate, Patricia began emailing Moya from Sydney expressing thoughts and feelings that ignited a creative spark for a collaborative food and wine memoir. Moya Costello is a versatile writer, who also teaches writing at Southern Cross University’s Lismore campus.
“It just came to me that writing about the history of drinking in our family could make a really good story,” says Moya. “When I read the emails I thought, well these are really good and this is the kind of writing where you stand back from the emotional pulpit and think, there is a good narrative here.”
The sister’s collaboration: I Don’t Remember: A singular history of drinking recounts adolescent memories of their family’s love of alcohol and food. “When you write with someone else it’s so great, it’s such a lovely thing to do,” says Moya.
These days Patricia and Moya often hold wine tastings on the verandah at Moya’s home in Clunes. The pair make these occasions a regular affair where they critique, and at times disagree over the colour, flavour and fragrance of a bottle of wine. A favourite beer for Patricia is Stone & Wood, a local beer produced in Byron Bay. Moya on the other hand recommends a beautiful Touriga and Tempranillo made by Jared Dixon of Jilly Wines. To produce the wine, named Big Cats, Dixon harvests grapes from New England’s Topper’s Mountain Vineyard.
Long term Patricia plans to work in a local bar and restaurant and to start building a new clientele base – watch out for her in the near future. You might even get to try one of her cocktail creations. After all, the sisters’ food and wine memoir reads: The Costello girls love a drink; it becomes us; and, through it, we become who we are.
