Tried-and-tested favourites, cocktail club, forever friends and nightcaps after the kids go down – we want in.
Christine Lafian is the founder and creative director of fashion, homewares and bed linen label SUKU Home. Initially a side hustle, SUKU launched 10 years ago as a small collection of bed linen designed in Melbourne and made in Indonesia. Christine herself was “made in Indonesia”, moving to New Zealand to finish high school when she was 15, and Melbourne for university.
Now, SUKU is a fully fledged brand with a destination store, Dream Baby, on Melbourne’s famous shopping strip, Gertrude Street in Fitzroy – and Christine is one of our fashion icons. Ten years on, she has additional projects. Her son, Enzo, is almost two (and in full toddler mode), and she and her husband Chris have a beautiful home in Melbourne’s western suburb of Brooklyn, which they also share with their two fur babies, Manja and Papi.
Juggling creative direction and operations of SUKU with mum-life keeps Christine more than busy, so when the weekend comes, it’s all about the good things in life: good food, good wine and good people. It’s a stage in life when you lean into tried-and-tested favourites, says Christine. “While our son is still small, and lots of our friends are in the same boat, we do a lot of hanging at each other’s houses, eating and drinking. It’s our favourite leisure activity to have time to sit down and chat over a drink.”
Being part of, and surrounded by, young families also means there are a lot of park runs and playground hangs. Any spare moment for alone time is a rare indulgence. “Having a moment to have a whisky and scroll on my phone is luxury at this point,” Christine says. But if she could get away for a bit of R’n’R, it would be to the Mornington Peninsula’s Alba Thermal Springs and Spa. She loves those hot springs.
If Christine and Chris get a date night in the calendar, they head into the city to Embla, the wine bar that tops many a Melbourne “must-eat” list. “When you’re parents, you don’t want to be adventurous with your choices, you want to go somewhere you know the food is good, atmosphere is right and you’re going to have a good time.”
It feels like Christine has nailed the weekend life with safe bets, forever friends, home time and cocktail club. We want to do it too, so we asked her for every detail of her weekend plans.
What’s the plan?
“I’m always excited for the weekend. Tired, for sure, but I like to kick it off with after-work drinks with my SUKU team. One of us will run out and pick up supplies before we close, and then we can all relax with a wine and catch up. Usually someone in the team is single and they do the talking so the rest of us can live vicariously through their dating stories. No one wants to hear me talk about my kid. That’s boring.”
What’s on the menu?
“There’s just the four of us at work, so we can keep it simple with wine and snacks – Sicilian olives and a good quality bag of chips is my go-to. I’m really into this black and truffle version at the moment. We’re also on Gertrude Street, so if we want something more substantial for dinner, there are so many great restaurants for us to head to after.”
What are you drinking?
“I’m a red-wine person and so are most of the team. I’m obsessed with the Fleet Wines Red Hill Pinot Noir from here in Victoria. It’s delicious. I’m much more into classic wine varietals nowadays — I just got over the natural wines I drank a lot of during COVID times. Fleet’s pinot is traditional but there’s no heaviness. It’s just right. If I want something classically Italian, I go for the Fontanafredda Langhe Nebbiolo.”
What’s the plan?
“Cocktail Club is something I’ve been doing with my close friends for a while. It’s a closed group, too – we’re not taking new members. We’re all so busy that when I get a chance to see my friends, I want it to be just my people. I think it’s a mum thing. We try to meet once a month and rotate who hosts. The host gets to pick the cocktail and makes enough for everyone to drink them all afternoon.”
What’s on the menu?
“My friend Lynh, who has a catering biz called Boma, is cooking today. It’s usually a potluck kind of dinner, so everyone gets to bring something. All my friends enjoy cooking, and we love food. It’s become our love language to cook for each other. For these meals, we try to match the food to the drink. Often it’s Italian food, but this time she’s going with Asian-inspired dishes. A whole fish is easy to cook, but also really impactful. I also cook a lot of seafood, it’s probably my signature. People are scared of messing it up, but it’s actually really hard to mess up seafood. You can’t really over or undercook it, and if you do, you can always add water and bring it back. Herbs too – herbs will cover all your mistakes.”
What are you drinking?
“It’s my turn to host and I’ve chosen a Watermelon Spritz, which tastes amazing and is visually pretty stunning. It’s a take on something we had at the pub last summer and then learnt to recreate it at home. It’s just prosecco, Montenegro and vermouth with blended watermelon, so it’s fruity, but has some warmth there that transfers well to the cooler seasons.”
What’s the plan?
“I try to not do too many things on a Sunday. I like to just hang out with my husband and son, and properly chill out. We do an easy cook at home, or a takeaway so we can have one less thing on our to-do list before the week starts again. “
What’s on the menu?
“My husband has an Italian background, so we often have pasta on a Sunday. He does Passata Day each year, so we keep a store of tomato sauce in the house, which he’ll use to make a Sunday pasta. Enzo also loves pasta, or any kind of noodle really, so it’s good knowing it’s something we’ll all enjoy.”
What are you drinking?
“We don’t often drink while eating dinner with Enzo, but once he’s down for the night, we do enjoy a nightcap. Japanese whisky is lighter than Irish, and Nikka Whisky From The Barrel is so good. We’ve had it a few times, but every time I’m like, ‘oooh, this is good’. Sitting together and sipping our whisky is the one thing we still try to do to wind down and have our own time together at the end of the day. We chat, as we don’t always have a lot of time to communicate, but often it’s a little bit of time to scroll through our phones. In truth though, we don’t often have a lot of time to do that as working parents, so that’s okay.”
- “Flowers from the Flower Vasette in Collingwood or Pompello in Seddon”
- “Cheese and cured meat from Sacca Deli or DOC Deli in Carlton”
- “New records for my collection, I bought a lot in lockdown, it’s slowed since then. My last addition was an album from the Indonesian band Naif. They broke up so I thought it would be a good addition since it will go up in price one day.”
- “Moonlit Forest Incense from Bau Bau by SUKU. I’m biased, but I love our incense range. This scent is woody but sweet. Perfect if you like earthy smells but don’t want your house to smell like a log cabin or a bonfire.”
- “A new recipe book or magazine. I just preordered Ellie Bouhadana’s new cook book. I’ve been following her newsletter so I am very excited to have her recipes in hard copy.”
