Donna Chang. Blackbird. Boom Boom Room.
Iris. Bisou Bisou. Over the past decade, the Ghanem family has steadily built a restaurant empire notable for its quality and variety.
But the beating heart of the group has always been Byblos, which opened at Portside Wharf way back in 2005, its Middle East-inspired food tapping into the Ghanems’ Lebanese heritage. Still, when set against the newer restaurants in the group, the flashy riverside spot was beginning to feel a little dated. So, what to do? Ghanem CEO Vianna Joseph reckons the group has spent three years wrestling with that question.
The exciting Brisbane restaurants and bars still to open in 2024 “There’s ...
a lot of sentimentality around Byblos, with it being the original venue that Ghanem Group is built off, and we wanted to give the project the attention it deserved,” Joseph says. “As a family, we’ve put a lot of thought into it. It’s been a hands-on process [with] lots of discussion and research.
” The result in late October will be a completely reimagined Byblos. Gone will be the dark, moody and relatively ostentatious flourishes of the original, replaced by a light-filled interior that better connects the venue to the river outside. Diners can expect sand-like textural walls, arched travertine features and marble surfaces to better capture the ancient coastal city of Byblos in Lebanon, after which the restaurant is named.
“It’s a complete internal rebuild,” Joseph says. “Every wall has been kn.