The Darlinghurst restaurant that sits atop the favourites list of Sydney chefs and food lovers in the know has sold to one of the city’s emerging restaurant groups. In April, Bar Vincent will join the restaurant stable already simmering with the chef-hatted Bar Copains and recently opened Bessie’s.

On any given night, Sydney property tycoons, cultural heavyweights and high-profile chefs sit side by side in Bar Vincent’s old-school dining room on Liverpool Street. They don’t come for the view (there isn’t one); chef’s chef Andy Logue and business partner Sarah Simm oversee a dining room where everyone seems to know everyone.

“Anyone I’ve told we’re buying it says don’t f--- it up,” says incoming co-owner Nathan Sasi. The chef’s first step in making sure that doesn’t happen is getting his team in the Bar Vincent kitchen and working alongside Logue before they take the reins.

“We want regulars to come in and think nothing has changed, that it’s exactly what it was when Andy and Sarah were there,” Sasi says.

It helps that Sasi and his business partner, Morgan McGlone, are both seasoned chefs, and Bar Copains and Bessie’s, both in Surry Hills, follow a similar ethos to Bar Vincent.

“It’s great to go out on a high, to pass it on to good people where we know the legacy will be maintained and the staff are staying on,” Logue says.

“I’m really proud of Sarah. We work every shift, it felt like the right time to do something else. Morgan [McGlone] is a good customer, we got talking and agreed a price. It wasn’t for sale to just anyone.

“Our staff are very loyal, they run it [with care] like it’s their own restaurant.”

Speaking to the Herald on a typical night, one in which singer Jimmy Barnes is among Bar Vincent’s throng of diners, Logue finds it difficult to pinpoint reasons for its success in a city with no shortage of restaurants.

Logue arrived from Melbourne, little known in his adopted city. On the night the chef-hatted Bar Vincent opened in 2019 – in the building where 1980s hotspot Tre Scallini traded – Logue worked in the kitchen solo and they forgot to float money in the till. He guesses the old-school personalised style of restaurant – where there isn’t a modern booking service (one of the few changes will be a move to an online booking system rather than via email) – has struck a chord with Sydneysiders.

Sasi is more forthright about what attracted him and McGlone. “It’s our favourite restaurant. It’s on the list of Sydney’s most recommended restaurants [as is Bar Copains],” he says.

Also important is the relationship with suppliers, and a menu Sasi describes as “hyper-seasonal”.

“Anything they do with seafood there is excellent. The whole John dory, the mussels with butter sauce,” Sasi says of the Bar Vincent menu. He’s also a fan of the agnolotti al pin (rabbit, veal and pork filling) in sage butter sauce.

Bar Vincent will keep its classics long after Logue and Simm have left the building.

“When you’re in a position to buy such a great restaurant, you do,” Sasi says. “The older I get, the more patriotic I become about Sydney. I’d hate to see restaurants like this become an office. They could’ve gone to market and got more money … [but] we see ourselves as custodians of this great place.”

Logue rules out any immediate plans for another hospitality venture. “Neither of us have plans. Take stock, go fishing,” he says.