Two coffee machines. Three milk jugs. Maybe 50 orders at any one time.
Plenty of locals won’t remember Chez Laila, but just as many will. Parked down the end of South Bank on the boardwalk in the mid-1990s, it used to pump on weekends, with families and couples piling in for coffee, cake and comfort food inspired by owner Antoine Ghanem’s native Lebanon. Vianna Joseph remembers.
She remembers working those two coffee machines and three milk jugs. She remembers her cousin, Nehme Ghanem – Antoine and wife and Chez Laila co-owner Adrienne’s son – working alongside her. “Nehme and I were guns on the machine,” Joseph says.
“We were just teenagers. We’d get angry if you ordered anything other than dairy or soy milk, and the coffees were probably dreadful by today’s standards. But we were good at it.
” Top Melbourne chef Shane Delia to expand empire to Brisbane Now, Joseph is back by the river, only at Portside, not South Bank. And she and Nehme Ghanem are still good at this. Nehme and his brother Adonis are directors of Ghanem Group; Joseph is the company’s CEO.
Ghanem Group has been on a tear these past six years, opening Donna Chang in the CBD in 2018, Iris and Bisou Bisou at Hotel X in 2021, and Luc Lac late last month at Queen’s Wharf. Before that, there was Blackbird in the CBD in 2014 – and before that, there was Byblos, which opened at Portside in 2005. Named for the ancient, coastal city of Byblos, it was a flash party place for Brisbane’s brigh.