‘Everything has a timeline’: Sydney fine dining institution Bentley to close

Bentley Restaurant and Bar is set to close in August, after 20 years at the top of Sydney’s fine-dining sector. The two-hatted restaurant, which opened in a Surry Hills pub before moving to O’Connell Street in 2013, was among the city’s first to serve a casual take on haute cuisine.

“It was loud, bold and modern,” said sommelier Nick Hildebrandt, who co-founded Bentley with chef Brent Savage. “It changed the face of fine dining.”

While fine dining is in retreat across Sydney, this closure isn’t the end for Bentley. Faced with the end of their lease, Hildebrandt and Savage chose to hit pause – opting to bide their time, watch the market, and plan for a strategic rebirth in late 2027 or 2028.

“We’re not being forced out of fine dining, we’re not being forced to move, we’re going out on our terms,” said Savage. “We’re really proud of the impact the restaurant has had over the past 20 years, but I don’t think the story’s necessarily finished.”

The decision follows a wave of high-end restaurant closures in Sydney, including Paddington restaurant Ursula’s, Oncore by Clare Smyth at Crown, and fine dining institution Quay, which closed after an unprecedented 23 consecutive years of holding three Good Food Guide hats.

“It’s undeniable that the whole industry has been challenged recently with ever-increasing costs, a fuel crisis, and all of these things which add up,” said Savage. “It’s a really difficult situation to navigate, but I think you just have to stand by your core principles.”

At Bentley, that has always meant an unwavering commitment to excellence. Savage and Hildebrandt met while working at Marque in Surry Hills and decided to open a restaurant together in 2005, after taking home The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide award for Chef of the Year and Sommelier of the Year, respectively.

It marked the beginning of Bentley Group, which now operates acclaimed restaurants King Clarence, Watermans and Eleven Barrack.

Bentley made a strong first impression: “It was probably one of the first restaurants in Sydney that got two hats straight from the get-go, without the white tablecloths or the old-school service,” Hildebrandt said.

By 2013, it was time to move on “to new and bigger things”, Savage told Gourmet Traveller at the time. Their O’Connell Street restaurant retained a sense of adventure, in a refined and contemporary space designed (and refreshed, in 2018) by long-term collaborator Pascale Gomes-McNabb.

Fine dining has changed a lot since then, Savage said. He’s noticed that diners are still willing to spend, but they’re less inclined to book a 20-course meal with a side of culinary education. Instead, he said, there’s a greater emphasis on comfort and familiarity.

“For the next evolution of Bentley, we’ll be looking at that very closely,” he said.

“The good thing about putting [Bentley] on hold for the moment is it’ll give us time to reimagine what fine dining should look like.”

They have some ideas. Hildebrandt said he wants Bentley to be reborn as “the best version of itself”, with a smaller dining room, seating a maximum of 50 people, and an a la carte menu. It needs a cellar capable of holding their extensive wine collection, a private dining room to host events, and a space with heritage charm or a memorable view. They’ve already begun looking at sites, mostly within the CBD.

The Bentley Group is not one to shy away from change. Savage and Hildebrandt’s hospitality group aggressively restructured over the past two years, closing longstanding restaurants Cirrus (Barangaroo) and Monopole(CBD), while selling plant-based Potts Point restaurant Yellow to head chef Sander Nooij and his business partner Mark Hanover.

Each pivot was about growth and consolidation: they would rather have a small group of large restaurants like King Clarence, Watermans and Eleven Barrack than a large group of small restaurants.

“Everything has a timeline on it,” Savage said.

“It’s like Brent’s philosophy on food, and my philosophy on wine,” said Hildebrandt. “It’s always changing, we’re never really satisfied. We’re always looking to change the menu, to change the wines available by the glass, and we do the same with our restaurants as well – we’re always evolving.”

From June, Bentley will reintroduce a selection of its defining dishes to farewell O’Connell Street. The bar menu will include smoked eel parfait with celery and kombu, and popcorn chicken with garlic aioli; for the restaurant, there will be two tasting menus ($175 for five courses, $240 for seven courses) featuring the return of kingfish with squid ink, and perfumed fruit and violet ice-cream and cocoa honeycomb.