It’s not your imagination, Greek food really is everywhere right now. Over the past years, cities have become awash with Aegean blues and creamy white hues as Greek stampeded into prominence as one of the world’s most-popular cuisines.

Considering he grew up in a Greek immigrant household, it might surprise casual observers that it took until now for restaurateur Chris Lucas to add a Greek venue to the powerful Lucas Collective empire. But Lucas is adamant that Noẽma – opening in Melbourne’s brand-new, $1 billion 435 Bourke Street precinct in spring 2026 – is arriving exactly when it should, and not a moment before. And there won’t be a blue stripe in sight.

“It’s hard to explain in some ways, because you have to have been born a child of an immigrant family… When I grew up, as a young kid, it wasn’t really cool being a Greek,” Lucas starts. 

“I grew up in Geelong… and I certainly wouldn’t call it the multicultural melting pot that it is today right? My dad was a publican and a chef, we owned a pub… and it was pretty tough environment.  So for many years, my father was so hell bent on being Australian… we sort of shunned our [Greek] upbringing a little. We were proud of it, but we were Australians first and foremost… that was drilled into me. And if you talk to a lot of the immigrant families of the ’50s and 60s, they had a lot to prove.”

Even when Lucas left a career in IT and found his calling in restaurants, a Greek taverna was about last on his list.

Credit: Supplied

“I’ve always been a little anti doing the absolute obvious, so just because I’m Greek, in some ways I was almost offended that people expected me to do a Greek restaurant. Why wouldn’t I, right? For me, it was more intellectually stimulating to challenge myself in other genres.”

In the intervening years, Lucas has challenged himself with Southeast-Asian (Chin Chin), French (Maison Bâtard), Italian meets American (Grill Americano), Japanese (Kisumé and Yakimono) and more. Wishbone, announced earlier this year in the same 435 Bourke Street build, will explore Hong Kong’s cosmopolitan cuisine.

Related story: The best spots for a meal out in the Melbourne CBD

Credit: Supplied

Wishbone’s newly announced sister restaurant Noẽma is only coming about now because Lucas feels like Greek cuisine has finally aged into its own on the cultural stage.

“Even up until probably recently, Greek food was not a mainstream cuisine – like say Chinese or Japanese or Italian,” Lucas says. “If you had asked me to do a Greek restaurant 20 years ago, there wasn’t broad acceptance in the marketplace for Greek food, so I would have potentially been forced to do traditional Greek food – pita bread, dips and lamb and all that sort of stuff.

“In some ways I had to wait for Greek food to grow up, if that makes sense.”

It wasn’t until Lucas was sitting with his wife, Sarah Lucas, recently in a plaza in Athens that it felt like the time was ripe.  “I said if we can capture some of this young, really cool energy – and it’s not just in the food, by the way, it’s also in the design – maybe now is the time for us to finally do a Greek restaurant, which reflects the modernity of Greek food and the modern Greek culture.”

Credit: Alexandra Drewniak

Noẽma is the answer, where Lucas plans to embrace a more envelope-pushing vision of Greek food. He’s not trying to channel the rustic, homestyle Greek that still proliferates  (“I could never compete with someone’s mother’s recipe, right?” Lucas laughs) but rather a menu that places Greek dining in the fine food parthenon. Think traditional coastal Greek dishes, realised with the best Australian seafood – “because believe it or not, here in Australia our seafood market and our offerings are even broader than what you can get in Greece,” – organic Greek olive oil, aromatic oregano from the coastal cliffs of the Peloponnese, and Greek honey so thick is closer resembles treacle.

While it might whisk you straight to Greece on the plate, the laser focus on design is going to be quintessential Lucas Collective. “It’s not going to look like your traditional Greek taverna, let’s put it that way. It’s going to look like a beautiful restaurant,” Lucas says.

“When I actually talk to my Greek friends – of which I have a lot – they say to me: ‘Oh, thank God, you’re actually going to create a restaurant that we can go to’. One that actually puts Greek food on an elevated status, rather than your local family taverna,” he says.

“Maybe it was worth waiting. Everyone will have to be the judge, of course.”

Noẽma is planned to open in spring 2026, at 435 Bourke Street, Melbourne. Watch this space for more.