Filip Pilioras - The Weekend Edition: What is on in Brisbane

How do you like to start your weekend?
With a late Friday afternoon cigar and single malt and a debrief of the day or postmortem on the week with Deanna, my wife, whilst we make dinner plans if we don’t already have any.

What’s your favourite thing to do on a Saturday morning?
Sleep in … indulge in an exquisite coffee that I did not have to make myself (made by my wife on our vintage gaggia lever espresso machine), while lazing in bed reading or playing with our five-month-old son Eli.

How do you like to unwind?
As a generalisation, my weekdays, combined with extra curricular activities on school nights, make it fairly hectic. Hence I like to unwind with some quiet time, almost in an isolationist outlook. Time spent with my wife and my baby boy is invaluable on weekends; although friends and family are always welcome, and it always centres around food.

What are your essentials for a well-spent weekend?
Home or relaxed locale, food, cigar, book, conversation, somewhere to relax – simple pleasures and privacy. Soul food, mind food. Day bed in the sun room is good.

What’s something you’ve been meaning to do on the weekend but haven’t got around to yet?
Finalise and install the ‘odds and ends collectables’ to the compliant new-look, non-offensive ‘hide everything tobacco’ decor of Paladar, in compliance with the new set of ‘snivel libertarian’ state legislation regarding smoking and tobacco retail. End of an era. Cest la vie.

What’s your favourite thing to do on a Sunday evening?
As little as humanly possible. Centre down, wind it up, mental prep for Monday.

What are you looking forward to next weekend?
Having finalised my redecoration of Paladar, I am looking forward to my nephew’s birthday on Saturday and a reunion lunch on Sunday with an old friend who now resides in London.

What are you reading at the moment?
As I have not had a television since I was 11 years old, books are a large part of my existence. I find myself regularly juggling several random books simultaneously depending on which part of the house I’m in. At the moment I am re-reading Paul Carter’s Don’t tell Mum I work on the oil rigs, she thinks I’m a piano player in a whorehouse. I’m also reading a local author awaiting publication, Nicholas Turner’s The Horrible Machine, a selection of short stories, and Fitzgerald’s short story, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Finally , The Last Eunuch of China, an absolutely harrowing story … although I’m also reading a lot of Dr Seuss with my son Eli.

What inspires you?
Well-made practical relics of the past. Items whose aesthetic properties display a true melding of form and function particularly resonate with me. They are testament to a time when things were made durable and not so disposable. I’m a conservationist at heart.

What was your childhood dream?
Surrounding myself with collections of things and people that please me – the consummate aesthete from a young age – but people matter the most.

What has been your greatest achievement?
The birth of my son. There is a moment, when we become immortal; for the first time, join all of humanity. It is the wonder of new life … a part of us. Of everyone, of the universe, forever changed. This poem was presented to me by Mark Salo when my son was born.

What is success to you?
Happiness and wellbeing; possess that and everything else will follow.

What are your words of wisdom?
To borrow from a finer man than me … my grandfather: ‘Moderation is the key to everything in your life. My elaboration on that premise is: even in moments of extremity, moderation is the key; it’s a fine line in those moments …

Only a local would know that …
Paladar is not open on the weekends due to certain lifestyle choices.

FAVOURITE WEEKEND SPOT TO:

Perk up … At the first sip of that day’s coffee.
Relax … Stretched out on my antique barber’s chair in the morning sun.
Dine … Early at Cirque. Late at Confit.
Indulge … In bed.
Shop … Antique epicentre in my neighbourhood.
Catch-up … Over breakfast.
Be inspired … In the bottom of a coffee cup.