Review: The Eve Hotel Sydney is a gold standard urban boutique hotel

At the cutting edge of urban cool, The Eve Hotel Sydney stands out as one of the city’s best boutique hotels.

4 min read

May 16, 2025 - 8:57PM

Lifestyle

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Redfern’s Wunderlich Lane residential, restaurant and retail precinct is coded for creatives and food-lovers, its centrepiece – The Eve – an archetype of modern hotel design and urban style.

Location

The address is Baptist Street, Redfern, but for anyone familiar with Sydney, The Eve is bang on the border of the inner-city suburb of Surry Hills, at the corner of Crown and Cleveland streets. For Sydney novices, that means there’s not a CBD high-rise, harbour or ocean within cooee. What you get instead is one of the city’s most vibing neighbourhoods, with easy on-foot access to Centennial Park, the SCG and Entertainment Quarter, plenty of buses or a short stroll to the light rail to take you to the heart of the city, a quick Uber to Newtown and Enmore, and 7km to Bondi Beach.

The Eve Hotel Sydney is part of Redfern's Wunderlich Lane precinct.

Set the scene

The Goldilocks in me wants to skip past the imposing timber doors and glazed ceramic reception desks and arrival formalities straight to the quirky collection of lobby chairs. A cobalt Gervasoni that looks like an oversized puffer jacket, a fluffy peach mohair Thonet, low-slung Cassina Utrechts in burgundy, and custom-made buttery leather lounges, punctuate a backdrop of snow-white walls and sculptural breeze blocks.

It’s a cool, calm, carefully curated welcome, and a vivid introduction to the architectural and interior design supergroup assembled by the hotel’s owners, Toga Group. The charming hospitality team wrap it all together with relaxed professionalism.

The lobby chairs are the first thing that stands out at The Eve Hotel Sydney.

The room

The Eve’s lively locale fades fast as I walk in a halo of soft light along a tranquil cloister to the guestrooms. Arched windows look onto a lush central courtyard creating another foil to the outside world.

My garden room is all autumn colours and tactile finishes, featuring sage woollen rugs, rusty velvet cushions, walnut timber cabinetry and terrazzo benchtops; the faïence ceramic from the entry reappears in door handles and hooks. In a rarity for a city hotel, there’s a small, serene courtyard with table and chairs for four, with all of the 102 rooms having a juliet balcony or terrace of some kind.

The contemporary space is knitted together by the smaller details: customised toiletries by Saardé made with olive oil and scented with lemon myrtle and rosemary; ochre and green glassware, also by Saardé and available in the lifestyle store next door; a mini bar filled with local snacks including Pepe Saya salted caramels, bespoke spirits from Four Pillars and Archie Rose, and StrangeLove non-alcoholic sodas.

My snugly hooded custom-designed bathrobe in eucalyptus green rates as the equal best hotel robe in Australia (the other being the linen Venroy one from Brisbane’s The Calile, also managed by TFE Hotels).

The Eve Hotel's rooms feature an autumn palette.

The extras

The level-five rooftop, featuring a 20m pool hedged by cabanas, lounges and umbrellas and a cooling layer of palms and native plants, is a stunner for the Australian summer. A full day of rain stops me from diving in, but I’m told the aqua experience is made all the more immersive by the speakers piping music underwater.

The Parlour Room – beloved of “skinfluencers” and beauty buffs – is another reason to check-in. The spa is dreamy cream and latte tones, an ethereal space designed to complement the chill tempo of the hotel.

The rooftop pool at The Eve Hotel Sydney is a show-stopper.

Food and drinks

Bar Julius radiates a warm glow beneath an arched ceiling printed with abstract art in outback colours by Dinosaur Designs’ Louise Olsen. It’s a place shared by hotel guests and locals from 6.30am to midnight, with a menu of originals and hotel favourites. At sun-up it’s pork hock toast soldiers and soft-boiled eggs; in the evening – under Chris Levine’s photo of Queen Elizabeth II with her eyes shut – I go for sure bet, a cheeseburger with a Tasmanian pinot.

The next night it’s up to level five to the light and airy Lottie, and though it’s a stormy Monday, it’s thumping. The modern Mexican restaurant and mezcaleria has a small, inventive menu – 17 dishes – every detail, down to the embossed leather tortilla warmers, finely tuned.

Adjacent to the hotel are Wunderlich Lane’s cluster of outstanding drinking and dining options: Olympus, a high-end Greek restaurant worth frocking up for; Baptist Street Rec. Club, a cool cocktail bar with a larrikin streak; R by Raita Noda, exclusive 15-seat omakase; the Southeast Asian Island Radio; and Regina La Pizzeria for, you guessed it. A Messina gelato shop sweetens the deal. There’s also a large chain supermarket and fresh food grocer and plenty more to sustain inner-city dwellers and visitors alike.

Tostada at Lottie, The Eve's rooftop Mexican restaurant.

What’s hot

The newly released Reset Ritual is a package combining an overnight stay at The Eve with spa treatments at the Parlour Room tailor-made to make you look and feel amazing. The package is priced from $1049 for a Sunset Balcony Room.

What’s not

Curious travellers will be drawn to The Eve’s location for its local energy and lifestyle offering, but if it’s your first time in Sydney you may prefer a more traditional tourist hotel in the CBD.