Former Bentley and One Penny Red chefs bring a touch of Gidley glamour to the east

When restaurant, bar and live music venue The Hideaway opens at Bondi Junction next week, a caviar trolley will lap the room, bombe Alaska will be served tableside and a two-pronged chefs’ hatted act will grace its kitchen. RJ Lines, the chef and co-owner at Petersham’s now closed One Penny Red, and former Cirrus and Bentley head chef James Tai have joined the start-up.

As Sydney grapples with a growing list of high-profile restaurant closures, The Hideaway is an anomaly in a market more commonly retreating to the safety of mid-market and modest fitouts. Hideaway’s chandeliers mark its ambitious intent. Lines describes the interior as “The Gidley meets Hubert”, referencing two high-octane Sydney CBD venues.

Except Bondi Junction doesn’t have the sizzle of Sydney CBD, or a cluster of top-line restaurant neighbours. The Hideaway is taking up residence in a once-nondescript basement space where Spring Street Social operated, wedged between offices and nearby shopping centres.

Exactly who is splashing millions on the Venetian plaster, luxe booths and grand staircase Lines isn’t saying, only that they own the building, want to remain private and are determined to put the Junction on the culinary map. “Transport is really good, it’s near the station and trains run late,” Lines said. And Bondi Junction is still largely untapped hospo turf in the middle of one of the most affluent areas in Australia.

The Hideaway space will be divided into two areas; a 60-seat restaurant and a 100-seat live music space Lines said would have a heavy focus on jazz and blues. You’ll be able to eat across the whole venue, its prized chef duo already fine-tuning dishes such as “crackling-crumbed” dry-aged pork chops and an updated banana split with banana fritters for the opening menu. You’ll still be able to chow down on a burger. There’ll be a serious drinks program, and Hideaway has a licence to trade until 2am.

Hideaway isn’t the only opening action in Sydney’s east. In Double Bay, an eastern hub that has seen an upswing in recent years, the owners of stalwart Sydney CBD restaurant Bambini Trust, Michael and Angela Potts, will join the wave of restaurants on Bay Street.

“We’re opening a restaurant in Ruby House,” which is up the hill on Bay Street from Neil Perry’s Margaret and his Italian restaurant spin-off Gran Torino, where Perry recently announced the basement bar will morph into Pizzeria Soto from Wednesday, June 3.

Potts said when Melbourne restaurant Tipo 00 decided to shelve plans to open at Ruby House, it created an opportunity on the strip. They’ll share the building with a wellness centre. The 50-seat restaurant, named Ruby’s, will open in September. “It’s nice and small, like we like,” Potts said. “It’ll be modern European, and we’ll do rotisserie chicken.”

Ruby’s will run all day. “Our blue swimmer crab omelette will be on the breakfast menu,” he said. The Potts live locally, and many of their city clientele live in the east: “They’re discerning, and they like consistency.”

The east can be a tough nut to crack, but fruitful when you get it right. Table Manners, on busy Macpherson Street in Bronte, with a mechanic’s and bottle shop for neighbours, has been playing to packed services since restaurateur Alex Cameron took the suburban plunge and opened in 2024.

Table Manners filled a gap in the eastern beaches that locals had talked about for some time, Cameron said: “Simple, refined European food in a comfortable neighbourhood setting, with a real focus on warm service, genuine hospitality and a friendly team.”

Buoyed by its success, he’s opening a spin-off restaurant, Fishnets, in a dual shopfront opposite Iggy’s Bread, also on Macpherson Street. After a couple of delays, it’ll finally open this month.

“With Fishnets just down the road, we’re hoping to create something that feels equally at home in the neighbourhood, this time with a Japanese influence and a more nocturnal energy,” Cameron said.

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Sydney’s east has always had its selfie-attracting waterside restaurants, and there’s some incoming action in that space mid-year after SRG Hospitality recently snapped up the onetime site of Pier restaurant and, more recently, The Boathouse at Rose Bay. The plan is to open a restaurant, Riva, on the top floor, and a branch of the Ripples chain beneath it.

But behind the waterfront, it’s the nooks and crannies of the east that are being explored at all ends of the market.

When Bourke Street Bakery co-founder Paul Allam returned from setting up the bakery in the United States with an eye to opening a couple of new, affordable concepts, he headed east. Allam recently opened Paulie’s Pizza Pezzo, a New York pizza slice shop on Oxford Street, Darlinghurst, but before that his eye also fell on the potential of Bondi Junction, where he opened Hi Hi Burger last year.

“I have teenage kids, and they’re always hanging out in the Junction on the way somewhere,” Allam said. He also believes the hub has a magnetic pull beyond teenagers: “It’s somewhere you always end up if you live in the east.”