Bar Lyla, a Wine-Focused Neighbourhood Bar From the Sonny’s Team, Slated for North Perth

On paper, Bar Lyla is an extension of Sonny’s. In practice, its owners are careful to describe it as something closer to a detour than a continuation.

Just a short walk from the North Perth restaurant, the new bar will be opened by Sonny’s head chef Sofika Boulton and co-owner Jess Blyth in the former La Madonna Nera space.

The pair are the sole owners. “It’s our own little thing,” says Boulton of the shared project. It’s shaped by proximity, familiarity and a desire to build something that doesn’t have to carry the weight of Sonny’s full momentum.

That sense of scale is central to Bar Lyla ‘s conception. Boulton describes Sonny’s as “such a beast”, a restaurant that has grown into its own rhythm. Bar Lyla, by contrast, is intentionally smaller and built with a different cadence in mind.

“It’s a small venue, and we’re going to have lots of exciting beverages on the menu,” she says. “So we can safely say it’s drinks first, and the food’s going to be the kind of food that goes well with drinks.”

The kitchen will still carry Boulton’s imprint, but it will operate with different constraints: a compact kitchen, lower volume and an openness to sourcing that would be harder to sustain at Sonny’s scale.

“I’m kind of excited about the idea of using things I can only get in small amounts,” Boulton says. “Things I can forage, things I can get from friends who grow stuff in their yards… things I can grow in my own garden.”

That approach is already informing early ideas. One is a signature bread offering – a departure from Sonny’s now-iconic version.

“I can’t possibly do the same bread that I do at Sonny’s,” Boulton says. Instead, she’s working towards buttermilk buns, “four tiny little buns that get proofed together and baked together, brushed with fermented honey and foraged herbs”.

The space itself will retain key elements of its previous life. The long bar remains, as does the open kitchen, now reconfigured for a tighter, more visible service. A hibachi grill – “a little micro fire”, in Boulton’s words – introduces a live cooking element, reinforcing the venue’s emphasis on immediacy and interaction.

There is also a deliberate aesthetic shift. Boulton describes the intent as a “more feminine energy than Sonny’s”, a relaxed wine bar with a slightly softer edge.

If Boulton is shaping the physical and culinary structure of the bar, Blyth is shaping its rhythm. At Bar Lyla, the drinks program will be deliberately fluid. A changing clutch of around 15 wines will be on offer at any given time, available by the glass and bottle. “We’ll just keep that [list] rotating. Once we run out of something, we’ll just switch it to something else.”

The list won’t be governed by rules, a strict regional focus, or single ideology. Instead, the selection is guided by preference and curiosity.

“I don’t think there’ll be necessarily any rhyme or reason,” says Blyth. “It’s mostly just stuff that we like, things we find interesting and that we want to share with other people. I don’t want bottles that you can easily find on wine lists everywhere in Perth.”

Cocktails follow a similar logic. The list will feature classics reinterpreted with restraint. “Old-school classics that you don’t really see much anymore,” she says. “We’ll have a bit of fun with it.”

Ultimately, Bar Lyla is designed as a place to begin or end the night rather than occupy it entirely. “You go to Bar Lyla and you might have a vermouth and some little snacks before dinner at Sonny’s,” says Blyth. “Or you come in late after dinner for a couple of cocktails.”

The proximity between the two venues is intentional. Blyth and Boulton are not tryign to separate Bar Lyla from Sonny’s.

“We needed to make sure that if we started a second venue, it would complement Sonny’s, a symbiotic relationship,” says Boulton.

Bar Lyla is 1/155 Scarborough Beach Road, Mount Hawthorn. The team has set its sights on opening by October 2026.

@bar.lyla