The young guns behind Clam Bar and Taylor Swift’s recent dining detour, Pellegrino 2000, are at it again, opening Neptune’s Grotto restaurant in the Sydney CBD in May.

The space, under Clam Bar on the corner of Bridge and Young streets, will focus on northern Italian-style food, with a strong emphasis on handmade pasta, says co-owner Andy Tyson.

“There’ll be a little more butter, more egg yolks, hand-rolled, artisanal,” Tyson says. Where Pellegrino 2000 uses high-quality dried pasta in some of its more Roman-style dishes, Neptune’s Grotto will go all in on handmade, with tortellini alla panna destined for the opening menu. “We’ll have a couple of people just making pasta,” Tyson says.

But don’t call it a pasta bar. “It’s going to be a little fancier than a pasta bar,” Tyson says. There’ll be plenty of protein dishes and other northern Italian-inspired creations on Neptune’s menu, overseen by co-owner chefs Dan Pepperell and Mikey Clift.

“It’s going to be a little fancier than a pasta bar.”

Co-owner Andy Tyson

The trio has shown a Midas touch as they’ve rolled out restaurants across Sydney. Their first venture wasBistrot 916, which opened at Potts Point in early 2021, followed by Pellegrino 2000 in Surry Hills in 2022 and Clam Bar last year. Good reviews and chef’s hats followed as the burgeoning group showed a talent for playful tweaking of classic dishes and cleverly reading the Sydney dining public.

When Good Food revealed last August that the Clam Bar team had nabbed the former site of Tokonoma and Cubby’s Kitchen, word on the eats streets of Circular Quay was the group might open a bar.

“A bar would have been the obvious thing to do,” Tyson says. “We thought about it, but it has a [big] kitchen, so we’ve got enough to work with to open a restaurant.”

With an entrance on Loftus Lane, Neptune’s Grotto will hold a similar number of diners – about 70 – as its sibling on the top bunk above. Should we expect a subterranean vibe at Neptune’s Grotto or something similar to Clam Bar? “They’re yin and yang,” Tyson says of the two venues.