The
Good Life
Capiche – Fine Italian dining on Ballina’s Lighthouse Beach S Haslam Capiche is a new player on the Northern Rivers scene, having opened in April 2022. They are enviably positioned atop the Ballina Surf Club, with an awesome 180-degree view overlooking East Ballina’s Lighthouse Beach. The brainchild of the team behind Bang Bang restaurants, Capiche was created first and foremost with a love of the panoramic ocean vistas that the location boasts. Because of the two-level layout, there are no tables down the back where all you see is other diners – I don’t think there would a table where you couldn’t glance up and see the beach. As co-owner Nicholas Simpson says, ‘the wrap-around ocean views, and the chance to have a venue poised directly over the beach was too good an opportunity to turn down. Beautiful food in beautiful places is our mantra, the rest came from there. There are so few restaurants in our beautiful
slice of the world where you can enjoy a meal and a wine while right on the water. So, we really are lucky to have found a place where you can do exactly that.’ Chef Ben Warriner has created an Italian menu that well and truly does the location justice. ‘It’s all about food prepared with integrity, fun and heart. In trying to capture the spirit of the sea, the menu walks the line from delicate to decadent and everything in between.’ You’ll find ingredients such as wild boar, local cheeses and charcuterie and of course, fresh Ballina prawns. On our visit the fish of the day was swordfish. I hesitated because my experience of swordfish, even in some celebrated restaurants, has been a dry, hard fish. The waiter seeing my hesitation, said that they did seafood really well. And indeed, the swordfish that came out was moist, so much so that it had trouble staying on the fork! Cooked over coals with salsa Siciliana and pistachio burnt
butter this was a fantastic dish. Still on the seafood, the BBQ octopus was another tender, juicy winner. The vegetarian Stracciatella: creamed buffalo cheese, pickled zucchini, chive, and leek was delicious, and the Woodgrilled Pumpkin, radicchio, sage burnt butter had wonderful multifaceted flavour that went well with the Italian white from the drinks menu; which has a good range of wines by the glass as well as bottles. Often roast pumpkin just tastes like pumpkin, but my vegetarian partner said this was the best he’d had. While the menu at Capiche is a bold one, there is something for everyone, with plenty of classic Italian favourites, authentic woodfired pizzas, some fun bits for the kids and, apparently, a killer tiramisu. The fit out is reflective of the Bang Bang sense of style, but with a fresh Mediterranean twist. Soft edges, alluring curves, sandy whites and Burgundy reds bring
both comfort and sophistication to the former Lighthouse Beach Cafe location. Yet the view, of course, remains the hero. For the avid morning beach-goer, the Capiche Kiosk will be a welcome surprise. A perfectly made Old Quarter Coffee, a fresh pastry or some house-made sweets sounds like a great way to round out a walk or a surf on Lighthouse Beach. We visited for Sunday lunch and the place was full. Nicholas says, ‘the response from our guests has been
really heart-warming. It seems the Shire has long had a desire for just what we’re offering. A new, fresh outlook in a place that we all love. We’re so happy to have been able to bring that to the area.’
Q Capiche Restaurant, Lighthouse Beach, East Ballina Wed: 4.30pm till late Thurs–Sat: 11.30am till late Sun: 11.30–5pm capicherestaurant.com.au
Lightbulb moment inspires beer documentary Simon Haslam ‘I’m 29, and all through school I’ve watched videos of the polar icecaps melting,’ says James Toohey, ‘and I knew a bit about regen farming. But when I saw Damon Gameau’s film 2040, the bit about regen really struck me, it was like a lightbulb moment, it really resonated for me.’ James runs a creative design studio in Sydney, and customarily makes five-minute videos for clients, but he seems to have become a passionate advocate for regen agriculture over the course of making a new documentary about the beer industry. ‘So, I guess like all, particularly younger, Australians I’m quite climate conscious, and we make choices about solar power, recycling etc’, he says, ‘but when I heard about this project to make regenerative beer, that segment of Gameau’s film came back to me, and I realised this was something that could make a huge difference, not just in the beer industry but to the behaviour of ordinary people, like me’. The film soon grew into a 45-minute documentary. ‘I’m not an expert on this, but the www.echo.net.au
more I thought about it, the more interesting it became to me. Beer is totally connected to Aussie culture, and we’re all a bit climate-conscious these days, making choices about how to reduce our impact with solar panels, with recycling etc. But two years ago, when I heard about Stone & Wood’s plan to make a regen beer, I realised it could have a real impact’. The main inputs to the beer industry are grain, hops and water. Grain, in particular, is often grown as a monoculture, with grains from many different farmers then travelling long distances to be mixed together in silos. The grain (mostly barley or wheat) is then transported to a facility where it’s roasted to become ‘malt’, which the brewer then mixes with yeast and hops to make beer. In Whitton, in the NSW Riverina region, Voyager has set up Australia’s first on-farm malthouse. As they grow the grain on smaller allotments, practically within view of the malting facility, food miles are reduced. But more importantly, this process means that they can keep the grain separate, so you can see the grain from each farmer. All the grain in the regen beer
comes from regen farmers, who rotate ‘cover’ crops to improve soil temperatures and the soil biome – both important to soil health. ‘The resulting beer is not only sustainable, but also regenerative,’ continues James, ‘it’s not just taking CO2 out of the atmosphere and contributing to soil health, it’s actually contributing to reversing climate change. In fact, the more we focused on the issue, the more Stone & Wood realised that they could expand this more broadly throughout their range’. In addition to making a range of purist ‘regen’ ales and beers, Stone & Wood are going to try and make 70 per cent of their products feature regen hops and grain, James says. Obviously, Stone & Wood are just part of a much larger group of companies, but if it works for them, the regen strategy can be expanded within the group. Not every hops or grain farmer is ‘regen’, so they need to be educated and brought along. For James the documentary is part of a process of educating consumers about what the damage is (from, for example, monoculture
grain-growing practices) and that it doesn’t have to be that way – that you can choose brands that are regenerative, making a choice that is healthier in the short term and in the longer term it’s better for soil health, and creates biodiversity within the soil. In addition, the documentary describes how the process of change creates new opportunities. At Whitton, instead of using fossil fuel to roast the grain they use biochar, which is in turn made from the discarded crops of other farmers in the Riverina, e.g. nut waste. By turning away from fossil fuel, this created a solution for another problem (waste crops) that no-one was even attempting to solve. This can make a huge impact in the beer industry, says James. ‘When Voyager were looking at their sustainability, they’d done a lot of obvious things like solar power, but changing from monoculture grain to regen grain cut a further 50 per cent of emissions. This could be very significant if the whole of Australia moved to this.’ Q Re-Generation premieres 9 Nov in Byron Bay
Jack Toohey, documentary maker, out in the field.
5AM – 11AM EVERY DAY 49 BURRINGBAR STREET, MULLUMBIMBY mşưĕŔćĕſ ǰǽ ǩǧǩǩ The Byron Shire Echo 33