Three-Michelin-starred American restaurant coming to Sydney with $690 menu

Bathers’ Pavilion doesn’t do a restaurant collaboration by halves. After partnering with three-Michelin-starred British restaurant L’Enclume for sold-out residencies in 2023 and 2025, the Balmoral Beach fine-diner will host California’s much lauded SingleThread over four weeks from late July.

“These residencies are cumulative,” says Bathers’ Pavilion managing director Jessica Shirvington. “Each one aims to raise the bar.”

SingleThread is run by husband-and-wife Kyle and Katina Connaughton in Sonoma County, a two-hour drive north of San Francisco. The farm-driven restaurant opened in 2016 and was awarded a third Michelin star in 2018, which it retains today.

It shares first place on La Liste, the Paris-based global dining guide, with New York’s Le Bernardin and nine other restaurants. According to The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, it’s also North America’s “Best in the West”.

“Californian seasonality through a Japanese lens” is the elevator pitch, but that barely touches on the Connaughtons’ ambition to showcase produce harvested from their 10-hectare regenerative farm. The farm’s greenhouses, orchards and expansive floral program shape every aspect of the dining experience.

“At SingleThread, we say we tell the story of today through the eyes of the farmer – really through Katina’s eyes,” says Kyle. “Guests experience ingredients harvested at peak season that morning, and feel a sense of time within that place – but also within the dining room.”

Heirloom vegetables and botanicals for the residency are already being grown at Bathers’ Pavilion’s own farm, Rotherwood, in the Southern Highlands. Bathers’ executive chef Aaron Ward will travel with a small kitchen and front-of-house team to Sonoma to work on menu development with SingleThread over several weeks in April.

Kyle’s career includes a spell as head chef of research and development at The Fat Duck under Heston Blumenthal, plus several years’ cooking in Japan at traditional kaiseki restaurants and with French master of “la cuisine du terroir” Michel Bras.

“Much of what we do at SingleThread is deeply informed by our time in Japan,” says Kyle. “It informs our cooking techniques, flavour development and how we build dishes. It also informs our hospitality – a warm, genuine style of service. We do all of that in a way that feels authentically Californian.”

“We’re excited to bring that to Sydney and see how it aligns with the space at Bathers’ Pavilion – how the Californian and Japanese perspectives can come together.”

The Connaughtons will bring a large brigade to Sydney for the collaboration at Bathers’, where the dining room will be reimagined with custom ceramics, flatware and new art installations. Meanwhile, the wine program will draw connections between Sonoma and Australia alongside Japanese sake and select Old World bottles.

The 10-course tasting menu is $690 per guest before drinks, equivalent to the restaurant’s price in California. Each meal will begin with SingleThread’s signature hassun course, a seasonal kaiseki-inspired showcase of up to 10 delicately composed bites. It’s presented on a beautiful floral board of tiny bowls featuring what’s in season at the farm.

“We start with a mixture of wood, moss, floral material and outdoor elements, combined with small bites that are a snapshot of today,” says Connaughton.

“Guests arrive to their first course presented on these structures. It’s something we’ve developed over time, coordinating wooden structures with floral material, and we look forward to recreating that in Sydney. It’s very unique.”

Connaughton says he and Katina have done many collaborations around the world – in Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Europe, North and South America – but never at this scale or duration.

“It’s almost like we’re creating another restaurant together. It’s not Bathers’ Pavilion and it’s not SingleThread – it’s something else entirely.”

The SingleThread residency will run Tuesday to Sunday across lunch and dinner, from July 28 to August 23.

Bookings open March 12 at 10am via the Bathers’ Pavilion website or by phone on 02 9969 5050. A presale window will be available to Bathers’ Pavilion database members – subscribe for first-release access.