The recently vacated Automata restaurant site in Chippendale will be born again as a seafood-focused restaurant.

Longshore will open in early April, with former Hartsyard owners Jarrod Walsh and Dorothy Lee at its helm.

Automata restaurant closed in December after its chef and co-owner, Clayton Wells, decamped to open MOD. Dining by Clayton Wells.

Lee tells Good Food the seafood angle is a passion project. "When we go out we usually skip the meat and order seafood," she says.

"Our menu combines coastal ingredients with Asian techniques and flavours, and will change regularly with what we like to call 'freestyle cuisine'," she adds.

They'll leave room for a few dishes to satisfy the carnivores (wagyu with bone marrow sauce and smoked fat), but Longshore's budding signature dishes will be more in the territory of greenlip abalone crumpet or whiting with XO pipi butter with green garlic and native greens.

"I grew up on the coast in Port Macquarie fishing, camping and exploring," Walsh says.

"All these things I learnt as a child, such as how to catch a fish and prepare it, play a huge part in the menu."

When Walsh and Lee left Hartsyard for the Chippendale's Old Clare last year, Walsh took charge of the hotel's food and there was always talk of their own restaurant as part of the plans on the Kensington Street strip.

With the hotel's former fine-diner, Silvereye, now converted to rooms, and the one-time Kensington Street Social now the hotel's breakfast space, the former Automata digs next door proved to be their landing pad.

Lee describes the redesign as more decorative than structural. "We're painting half of the ceiling mustard," she says of plans to make the space a little less austere.

Longshore will also offer a 10-course snack menu. "Five cold snacks and five hot," Lee says.