The veteran chef has devoted $3 million to Bobbie’s jazz bar in Double Bay, with a drinks menu sweeping from a New York favourite to a white chocolate espresso martini. August 26, 2024 You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add more.
Save this article for later Add articles to your saved list and come back to them anytime. Chef Neil Perry doesn’t have many hospitality firsts left to chalk up, but for all the countless venues he’s launched, the hospitality veteran has never opened a standalone bar. That will all change on Friday, August 30, when Bobbie’s serves its first Lychee Martini.
Its owners are clearly confident the Double Bay jazz bar will go the distance, with everything from the lashings of marble and gold leaf to the hand-blown light fittings built to last. And nothing says permanent like a mural. Perry reveals his team has spent $13 million on the Bay Street development .
The Asian-inspired restaurant Song Bird will open upstairs in a few weeks, and $3 million of that budget has been devoted to Bobbie’s downstairs. If there’s a reason it has taken Perry so long to get into the standalone bar game, it hasn’t been so much about finding the right partner as showing patience. “I started working for Neil 25 years ago, as a 17-year-old,” says Bobbie’s co-owner, Linden Pride.
The son of food writer Sheridan Rogers, Pride worked for Perry part-time through university as he found his calling behind the b.