Neil Perry opens Italian restaurant in former Song Bird site

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As Neil Perry’s Gran Torino moves to the starting grid on Saturday, the restaurant’s chefs have been scrambling, cooking pasta in woks in the reboot from the Asian-leaning Song Bird to an Italian venue.

Perry has always liked the Gran Torino muscle car from the 1970s, and the inclusive race message behind the Clint Eastwood film of the same name. And there’s the Italian city of Turin, where he’d originally planned to attend the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards in June before events unfolded in Double Bay, culminating in the decision to close Song Bird after less than a year.

The $13 million gamble with the Neville Gruzman building on Bay Street hasn’t matched the chef’s enduring success a block down at Margaret restaurant, which Perry said clocked its busiest day of trade late last month.

Perry originally conceded he’d “missed the mark” with the massive scale of the three-level Song Bird, plus Bobbie’s bar in the basement. But he’s walked back on earlier plans to recalibrate the site as a smaller venue under the new Gran Torino plan.

Bar Torino will open in the Bobbie’s space on September 2, and he’s keeping the top-floor event area, which had been earmarked to be leased out as office space.

Perry said it made sense to retain the bar rather than bring in an external operator, given Bar Torino’s antipasti menu will come out of the Gran Torino kitchen upstairs. “We’ll be doing Italian cocktails,” the veteran restaurateur said.

He’s more confident in the bar on its second lap after an early plumbing issue was finally sorted out. “You could’ve filled a swimming pool,” Perry said. “We all got pretty depressed when it smelled like a damp cave.”

Restaurant pivots are notoriously difficult, and the Asian-to-Italian move isn’t Perry’s first culinary shift. He cites the successful segue at Star Grill at Darling Harbour to Wokpool in the 1990s. And he’s had some experience behind the wheel with Italian, having previously opened Rosetta restaurants in Melbourne and Sydney.

“There’s probably slightly more dishes from the north, but we’ll walk all around Italy,” Perry said. “With Italian, good shopping is good cooking.” The Gran Torino kitchen will tap the network of suppliers built up at Margaret.

Expect top-shelf snapper in acqua pazza (crazy water) and premium swordfish with salmoriglio, Mishima beef in ossobuco (all three dishes will be $49), and a one-kilogram dry-aged CopperTree T-bone if you splash on the $260 bistecca alla Fiorentina.

Gran Torino’s executive chef Richard Purdue steered the Margaret kitchen, and he was part of the opening team with Perry at Rosetta in Sydney before that.

While Rosetta closed during COVID, Purdue said there’s a small nod to the restaurant, with its vitello tonnato finding space on the Gran Torino antipasti line-up alongside dishes such as calamari e zucchini fritti and a salad of Brussels sprouts, pear and walnuts.

Purdue is also rebirthing torta di Verona, a dessert that owes more to the long-closed Taylor’s restaurant in Surry Hills for its lineage than the Italian city in its name. “It’s got nothing at all to do [with the] city,” Purdue said.

While Gran Torino will share some of the slow-steaming technique of its predecessor, Purdue said the team has been forced to cook pasta in woks until the imminent arrival of new kitchen equipment.

With the minimal addition of Italian art and framed photos, one featuring actress Gina Lollobrigida, Perry said the team had been lucky the Song Bird interior was neutral enough to require minimal change for its Italian pivot.

He is aware of the high stakes involved, for both himself and his business partner wife, Sam. “It’s our house on the line,” he said.

Gran Torino might be a used classic; it could also prove a race-winning getaway car.

Open lunch and dinner Wednesday-Sunday; dinner Tuesday

24 Bay Street, Double Bay, themargaretfamily.com/venue/gran-torino