Restaurant Hubert

Suspending reality, if only for a little while, is so much of the reason we go to restaurants and bars. But where some places flirt with the notion of escapism, Restaurant Hubert absolutely revels in it. It’s a portal to another place and era – post-war France to be exact, or a very beautiful fantasy version of it – with no windows or hardly any mobile reception to convince you otherwise. 

When Hubert landed in 2016, Sydney had never seen anything quite like it – a vast basement space spanning two levels, two bars and a dining room complete with a stage for musicians, along with a clutch of private areas, including a 50-seat cinema. Somehow, though, it felt like it had already been around for years. The romance was real, right from the very start.

By that time, the Swillhouse group’s trifecta of bars (Shady Pines Saloon, The Baxter Inn, Frankie’s Pizza) had already taken Sydney’s drinking culture to a higher plane. With the opening of Hubert, the team announced themselves as major players in the restaurant game, too, by confidently reimagining the bistro playbook, with a heavily stocked cellar and service smarts to match.

In only half a decade, it has cemented itself as an essential drinking and dining destination – now with Two Chef’s Hats, no less – thanks to a level of ambition and immensity of scale that need to be seen to be believed. And, best of all, not for a moment along the way has the execution faltered.