Celebrated Melbourne chef Scott Pickett has announced he will close ESP next month. The Northcote restaurant offers an unashamedly high-end eight-course tasting menu of ultra-seasonal, frequently native ingredients. It will be replaced by an expansion of ESP’s more casual sister restaurant, Estelle Bistro.

“There’s a restaurant with my name on the door that I’m not in every night, which hurts me,” Pickett tells Broadsheet. “I’m tied up at Matilda a lot now. I just want to focus on two or three places rather than too many.”

Pickett opened Matilda in late May at the base of boutique hotel United Places. As well as Estelle Bistro, he is behind Collingwood casual fine diner Saint Crispin.

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“If I was 10 years younger and it was me standing in the kitchen with three or four staff there everyday ... it would probably be a different scenario,” Pickett says of the closing. “That [ESP] kind of business is probably built more around an owner-operator. Through choice and growth and change that’s just not me anymore.”

The current ESP kitchen will be used to service the expanded Estelle Bistro. The older bistro kitchen is likely to become the new restaurant bar, which will feature a larger drinks selection.

“It actually used to be one building,” Pickett says. “In the ’80s and ’90s it used to be a government office, so we’ll just knock out the wall in-between them and have one beautiful new space.”

Following the opening of the fire-fuelled Matilda in South Yarra, there’s early talk of introducing woodfired cooking to the expanded bistro, too.

“Come visit me and Stevie [Nairn] and the boys before we close,” says Pickett. “Thanks for the support – it’s been a wonderful three years.”

ESP’s last service will take place on Saturday August 18. The space will remain available for functions until renovations begin in January 2019.