John Kennedy Is Bringing Shakespeare to the Table

"He probably doesn't remember me," John Kennedy says, "but I certainly remember him. He's very definite in what he wants. It was character building."

John is talking about Marco Pierre White. In the 1990s, he completed a stage at one of White's Michelin-starred London restaurants — a formative period that shaped a career now spanning three continents and three decades. Today, he's the Executive Chef at The Lex, the flagship restaurant at W Brisbane, where his cooking is built on a single, unflashy principle: use what's around you, and use all of it.

"Ninety per cent of the ingredients we use in the restaurant is Australian, if not from Queensland," he says. "Our beef comes from Queensland. It's two hours away."

It's a philosophy that sounds simple because it is. But in a restaurant named after Lexington Avenue — the home of the first W Hotel, in the city that never sleeps — there's a tension between the swagger of New York and the quietness of Queensland produce. John leans into it. The setting nods to Manhattan grill culture; the food is unmistakably local.

From Dublin to the Whitsundays

John is originally from Ireland. He trained in London and Dublin through the 1990s, a period he describes as transformative for European gastronomy, before making the move to Australia in 2015. He worked on Hayman Island, relocated to Western Australia after a cyclone, and eventually landed at QALIA in the Whitsundays, where annual collaborations with chefs like Peter Gilmore, Guillaume Brahimi and Annelies Gregory became part of the Race Week calendar.

Each stop added something. The Hayman Island years taught him resort-scale execution. QALIA refined his approach to bespoke, produce-driven dining. The Lex, which opened as part of W Brisbane's South Bank precinct, gave him a stage and a kitchen built for ambition — a wooden-floor dining room on Level Three with skyline views and a brief to bring steakhouse theatre to the riverfront.

"We do these things not because they are easy," he says, "but because they are hard. They challenge us, they make us grow, they make us better." He's talking about The Lex's Chef Series — a programme of one-off, themed tasting events that have previously included a Perrier-Jouët champagne pairing dinner and a truffle tasting menu timed to the season. Each event starts with an ingredient or a theme, and the menu is built outward from there.

A Poisoned Court

The latest instalment of the Chef Series is, in John's words, epic. On Saturday 1 August, The Lex will host 'A Poisoned Court' — a six-course, beverage-paired dinner built around Queensland Ballet's acclaimed production of Hamlet. Two dancers will perform Pas de Deux vignettes as Hamlet and Ophelia between courses, moving through the restaurant's wooden floor while guests dine. Queensland Ballet's new Artistic Director, Ivan Gil-Ortega — appointed as the company's seventh AD in early 2025, with a bold 2026 inaugural season already underway — will share insights into the production.

The menu reads like a compressed retelling of the play. Albany rock oysters with champagne and caviar mignonette open the evening — a quiet, elegant prologue. Then smoked venison with pickled blueberries, walnuts and red wine jam: the first hint of something darker. Torched scallops with blood orange and salmon caviar give way to coral trout with saffron emulsion. The centrepiece is blood line wagyu with wagyu fat mash and black truffle — John's philosophy of using every part of the animal, applied without compromise. And then the dessert: a 'poisoned apple' with cinnamon and earl grey flavours. It looks like an apple. It isn't. It's a direct reference to the poison at the heart of Hamlet's court, plated.

For John, the collaboration with Queensland Ballet is a new relationship, born from Brisbane Quarter's sponsorship of the company. "Why not do some sort of a collaboration?" he says, with the straightforwardness of someone who's spent thirty years making things work in kitchens across Ireland, England and Australia. When asked what patrons should expect, he's characteristically direct: "It's going to be epic. It's going to be memorable. People will be talking about this. They'll be telling other people, 'You should have been there.'"

'A Poisoned Court' — Pas de Deux Dinner with Queensland Ballet Saturday 1 August 2026, 6PM canapés, 7PM seated The Lex at W Brisbane, 81 North Quay, Level 3 $295 per person, six beverage-paired courses Book via Sevenrooms