When Beirut-raised nurse Ibby Moubadder arrived in Australia in 2007, his plan was to become a doctor. This week, the now restaurateur and budding bar tsar adds glam rooftop bar Joji to the rapidly expanding ESCA hospitality group. “[Nursing and hospitality] are both about looking after people,” he says of his career switch.
In 2013, he opened Newtown cafe Cuckoo Callay as a sideline project on a whim and a prayer. Today ESCA’s seven venues include the hatted restaurants Aalia in Martin Place, and Surry Hills’ Nour, as well as Ito, a Japanese restaurant with an Italian spin, which snared a “wow worthy” 15/20 review in April. If ESCA isn’t Sydney’s most rapidly expanding hospitality group, then it’s definitely a contender, with Moubadder one of the city’s most ambitious restaurant operators.
Over the next six months he’ll add Bondi and Parramatta branches of his Henrietta chicken eatery, and late next year a glitzy new restaurant and bar will land at the Oxford & Foley development in Darlinghurst. If he’s a little late to Sydney’s rooftop craze, it isn’t through lack of trying. The Joji (Japanese for George) deal has been three years in the making, as plans were lodged to add cover to the fifth-floor rooftop space, which sits above the Cartier flagship store on George Street.
“The first time I stepped foot up here I knew it had to be a bar: music playing, smoke from the robata grill ...
with the energy of Sydney,” he says. Moubadder wants to bri.