Three New Restaurants and a Great Cocktail Bar Proving Service Still Matters

The Hot List is the definitive guide to Sydney’s most essential food and drink experiences, updated weekly.

 It’s just the way things go: some years, it feels like nothing opens. In others, it feels like everything opens – and 2025 is the latter. Sydney’s hospitality scene has rarely felt this alive, this diverse, this inventive. Some of the year’s strongest openings are just weeks old, and they’re already leaving a massive imprint on the city.

At first glance, there’s no common thread between all these spots, but they share an unswerving commitment to making your time with them special. They do it through food, of course. And they do it via their great atmospheres. Most of all, though, they do it through service.

South End

Like any skill, good service is built through experience. Practice makes perfect, and the people behind Newtown’s (technically Erskineville) South End have had a lot of practice. The new Euro bistro, which is tucked away on the quieter “south end” of King Street, is helmed by a veteran hospo trio. Hussein Sarhan was the former head chef at Fred’s, and his fellow chef and co-owner Alex Tong was a sous chef at Ester.

 Their other business partner, Paul Guiney, has been a steady and serene front-of-house presence in Sydney and Melbourne for over 20 years (his experience is so wide-ranging, Tong and Sarhan say he must be around 750 years old). That depth of knowledge, and the simple ways in which it’s deployed, make South End feel old beyond its years – or month, in this case. It adds up to a menu and atmosphere that feel instantly familiar and utterly congenial. You’ll want to come to this end of King Street more often.

Grandfathers

Speaking of hospitality trios and experience, the Pellegrino 2000, Clam Bar and Neptune’s Grotto triumvirate recently scored another slam dunk with Grandfathers. It’s a deep dive into Chinese cuisine – the Sichuan and Guangdong regions specifically – in the space that once housed CBD Thai institution Long Chim.

Fans of the team’s previous venues will find all the flourishes they love. But what’s really admirable is how much this crew commits to upping the ante each time. It’s notable that one of the biggest hires made here isn’t a big-name chef, it’s a front-of-house legend: revered sommelier Charles Leong. He’s the man who stewarded the beloved list at Golden Century in its glory days and has left his mark on the service style of many a Sydney somm since.

That kind of commitment to service – from the top-down – pervades Grandfathers. And the food and vibes are just as immaculate as we’ve come to expect.

Vin-Cenzo’s

When Bar Vincent closed earlier this year, Darlinghurst was bereaved. Then, a ray of hope – the team behind Bessie’s, Alma’s and Bar Copains rescued it. The restaurant would live on. But things weren’t quite right. Locals were missing the Bar Vincent of old, and its new owners inherited a litany of problems – from tired kitchen equipment to the flaws of the creaky old building it was housed in. Things had to change. So Bar Vincent closed and reopened as Vin-Cenzo’s in August.

The crew set about modernising the venue, while trying to preserve what made everyone fall in love with it in the first place. One of those hard calls was cutting the phone lines and instituting an online booking system instead. “We want to focus on our customers when they’re here, we don’t want to be on the phone talking to someone else,” co-owner Morgan McGlone said at the time. “That’s why we have the online ordering system.” Tough decisions like that – cutting ties with the past to prioritise a new service style – have paid off.

 Now that Bar Vincent is gone, Vin-Cenzo’s has the breathing room to be its own restaurant. And even though the change has disappointed some regulars, it’s thrilled others – and brought plenty of new guests in for the ride.

El Primo Sanchez

Another hospo team that inherited a previously occupied space is the group behind Maybe Sammy. The team took over Eileen’s, the Four Pillars gin bar, on Crown Street last month. But rather than trying out a new concept, it was the perfect opportunity to rehome El Primo Sanchez, the Maybe Group’s Mexican-themed Paddington bar.

It probably would have been more than good enough to just import everything from the old spot and keep it all more or less the same. Instead, co-owner Stefano Catino and bar manager Eduardo Conde viewed it as a chance to dial up the service to new heights. There’s table service, a longer and more exciting cocktail list, and an enhanced focus on tequila and all things agave. There are new features like a tequila passport, which encourages tasting notes, and lockers for customers to buy and store rare bottles. But none of these improvements have come at the cost of fun.

El Primo can still be every bit the party bar, particularly as the evening rolls on, but it now has the same polish you’ll find at its acclaimed siblings in the CBD.

The Hot List is proudly sponsored by Square.