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PROFILE: HANNAH GREEN
Hannah Green
The restaurateur’s new venue Daphne is taking a page out of Etta’s first draft.
WORDS Laura Box
PHOTOGRAPHY Kristoffer Paulsen
“MY DAD KEEPS telling me, ‘If it was easy, everyone would do it’,” says Hannah Green.
The restaurateur behind Brunswick East’s inimitable Etta is referring to the launch of her newest project, Daphne. The project comes at a “really tough time” for the industry, which is navigating skyrocketing produce prices, shrinking margins, and recruitment problems. Despite the current challenges, Green says the opportunity to take over the former Bar Romantica space “was too good to not take”.
“It’s next door to Etta and I was already paying for the bins because we had nowhere to put them,” she says. “It was a natural progression.”
The style of hospitality I give creates a real sense of community. You feel like you’re a part of something and it gives you purpose every day.
Daphne is slated to open this September and is billed as a venue that caters to the status quo.
Green’s quick wit and boundless charm make it easy to understand why she was nominated for Gourmet Traveller’s Restaurant Personality of the Year in 2022 and received the Good Food Guide’s Service Excellence Award in 2024. The easy charisma bleeds into Green’s hospitality ethos of “warmth and generosity”, one which has defined the atmosphere of Etta, the contemporary Lygon Street bistro that has been at the vanguard of Melbourne food, wine, and hospitality for more than eight years.
“Etta was built on the principle of giving a warm welcome and making it feel like home,” says Green. “In everything I do, I think about that — whether it’s changing a menu, a chef, or looking at what we’re doing beverage-wise. For me, hospitality is a feeling. It comes back to, ‘How do we make people feel when they leave?’ That dictates the product we deliver.”
Green says generosity is integrated into every aspect of her business. “Generosity with our time, on the plate, in the size of the glass of wine we pour, and how we treat people in our industry.” The ethos of extending warmth and generosity has permeated everything she does –including the tone for Daphne.
A pub traineeship at the young age of 18 kickstarted Green’s hospitality career, and the restaurateur hasn’t looked back since. After her training, Green moved to Melbourne and started “pestering” Jayden Ong for a job at 312. At the time – around 2006 or 2007 – 312 was the hot new restaurant in town, says Green. Eventually, she landed a job there. “I knew nothing, and I still can’t believe he took me on,” she says. “It was the beginning of the end for me in terms of getting sucked into the industry I love.”
Green says her love of restaurants stems from the human encounters the job facilitates with everyone from customers to colleagues. “The style of hospitality I give creates a real sense of community. You feel like you’re a part of something and it gives you purpose every day,” she says.
Green opened Etta in 2017 alongside Dominique Fourie McMillan, who she’d met working at Neil Perry’s now-shuttered Rosetta, and Dominique’s husband Hayden. In 2019, the McMillans parted ways with Etta, leaving Green with the restaurant. Etta has evolved significantly over the years, morphing from a casual neighbourhood wine bar into a venue that became recognised for its innovative menus and Green’s appointments of up-and-coming chefs. Charley Snadden-Wilson (ex Ramblr, now Clover) took over from Hayden and led the restaurant to earn its first hat. Then came Rosheen Kaul, who went on to win a James Beard Award for her book Chinese-ish. During Kaul’s stint, the restaurant gained a place on The World’s 50 Best Discovery list. Since mid-2024, Lorcan Kan has been at the kitchen’s helm, with his dishes receiving similar recognition and praise to those created by Etta alumni.
Green says the Etta that exists today isn’t the restaurant she had originally intended to open eight years ago, which is where Daphne comes into the picture. “I still think we’re a neighbourhood restaurant at Etta, but at Daphne, we want you to be able to just pop in and have a drink,” she says. “The world is a really challenging place at the moment and I want it to be a refuge for people to come and escape for two or three hours.”
The restaurant isn’t the only thing to evolve according to Green, who notes her own growth. “I’m a very different person now to who I was back then,” she says. “I think I was naive and thought I knew a lot more than I did. Now I’ve been through so much in terms of how the landscape has changed over that time.”
Green is drawing on key learnings to help shape Daphne, which will showcase local makers across the board. “I love design,” she says. “I think it’s an important part of an experience. I also feel strongly about using Australian manufacturers. It’s like using produce from a farm that’s in season as opposed to buying strawberries in the middle of winter.” The interest in using Australian manufacturers stems from her desire to make decisions rooted in sustainability. But Green notes it comes at a cost. “At a time where margins are thinner than ever, you’ve got to balance out costs and find where you can value manage. Relationships are at the core of everything, and I’ve built a career on them. Having to push back on things or be like, ‘Hey, I’ve got a cheaper quote over here’, is hard. I’m smack-bang in the not-very-fun part of it.”
Despite her self-acknowledged growth, the restaurateur says she reminds herself of the importance of continuous learning. “When people around you speak, close your mouth and listen,” says Green. “If I stop and listen to what people are saying – and it could be a kitchenhand, food runner, or my head chef – I can take learnings from them. If somebody’s not doing their job properly, it’s because I’m not giving them the tools to do it.”
Green is a trained sommelier and worked at Attica before opening Etta.
Ex-Etta Head Chef Rosheen Kaul is the coauthor of the award-winning Chinese-ish
Diana Desensi will be Daphne’s first head chef.
Etta scored a place on The World’s 50 Best Discovery list
