After a decade at the helm of Melbourne fine diner Ides, Peter Gunn wanted a different way of cooking and working. His new project, Shogunn, strips the restaurant model back to a 12-seat yakitori counter.

When Peter closed Ides in March, he was not walking away from hospitality.

He was walking away from a version of it he no longer wanted to run.

Five months later, the former Attica sous chef is back on Smith Street in Collingwood with Shogunn, a 12-seat yakitori counter operating from the space previously occupied by Ides’ neighbouring bar, March.

It is a significant change from the 36-seat fine-dining restaurant he spent a decade building.

But Shogunn makes sense in the context of why Peter chose to close Ides in the first place.

Why Ides ended

Ides began as a monthly pop-up while Peter was working as sous chef at Attica, before becoming a permanent restaurant on Smith Street in March 2016.

Over the following decade, it became an established part of Melbourne’s fine-dining scene, built around multi-course menus and Peter’s technique-driven style of cooking.

By the beginning of 2026, however, what he wanted from the restaurant and his own cooking had started to change.

When the closure was announced in January, Peter told Broadsheet: “This is not really about the restaurant. It’s about me.”

The more relaxed steak nights at Ides had become closer to the type of service he was enjoying, with faster, more energetic food and a more casual approach.

Maintaining the established identity and expectations surrounding Ides was pulling in another direction.

There was also life outside the restaurant to consider.

A father of two, Peter spoke openly about wanting his next business to come with boundaries that would allow him to be more present with his family in the evenings.

Rather than reshape Ides into something fundamentally different, he chose to bring the restaurant to an end and move on to something new.

Ides and March served their final service on 14 March 2026, almost 10 years after the permanent restaurant opened.

Starting again with 12 seats

Peter first tested Shogunn at Malin in Carlton North in August before returning to the former March space at 90 Smith Street.

The six-week Collingwood residency opened on 29 August and runs until 4 October, with two sittings on most Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

The $97 set menu features 10 dishes centred on yakitori, using different cuts of chicken alongside dishes including miso-glazed eggplant, shokupan with pâté and chawanmushi with mushroom.

But the food is only part of what makes the project interesting.

Peter has pointed to the small Japanese izakayas that operate as an owner’s livelihood without necessarily needing the scale or complexity of a larger restaurant.

Shogunn follows that thinking.

It keeps him close to the cooking while removing many of the moving parts that come with running a bigger restaurant and team.

The ambition has not disappeared. It has simply changed shape.

A different idea of growth

For chefs, that may be the most interesting part of Peter’s next move.

Progression in hospitality is often associated with scale: a bigger restaurant, a larger brigade, more seats or another venue.

Peter has chosen to reduce almost all of those things.

It would be easy to describe the move from Ides to Shogunn as stepping back, but that misses what he appears to be trying to achieve.

He is still developing a restaurant concept, still cooking for paying guests and still planning for what comes next.

What has changed is the type of business he wants around the cooking.

The current Smith Street residency is temporary, but Peter has said he intends to find Shogunn a permanent home once the pop-up finishes.

The concept will also move into Farmer’s Daughters Wine House in Melbourne for two nights on 13 and 14 October as part of its Seasonal Table collaboration series.

What a permanent version of Shogunn eventually looks like remains to be seen.

But after a decade spent building Ides, Peter’s next chapter offers an interesting counterpoint to the usual hospitality growth story.

Sometimes progress is not another restaurant, more seats or a bigger team.

Sometimes it is working out what you want the restaurant to give you back.