After only nine months of operation, Raja restaurant, with its innovative Indian meets native Australian cuisine, has announced its final service will be on May 4.

Despite widespread acclaim for the Good Food Guide hatted Potts Point restaurant and head chef, Firedoor alumnus Ahana Dutt, owners Nick and Kirk Mathews-Bowden have struggled to make ends meet since January.

By early April, “there was no way to bring the business back” and ride out the winter, when trade historically slows.

“This is the most challenging it’s been, in the two decades I’ve worked in hospitality,” Nick Mathews-Bowden tells Good Food.

“We’re all sick of hearing about it, but it’s because of the cost of living. People who had the money to go out once a week might be going out once a month now, or not at all.

“And you can’t blame anyone for that, we all have to be mindful of how we spend the limited resources we have.”

“This is the most challenging it’s been, in the two decades I’ve worked in hospitality.”

Nick Mathews-Bowden, Raja

Coupled with rising operational costs (including an electricity bill that has tripled during their tenure), Mathews-Bowden says it might be time to rethink the viability of high-end hospitality. While the couple are taking a moment to reflect on their experience, they will retain the lease on the Potts Point site.

He predicts the next 12 to 18 months will bring more closures. At Raja, Dutt tried to adapt the menu while remaining true to her vision, adding dishes with “more familiar” ingredients.

Dutt had introduced her own flavour of Indian cuisine to Sydney, with dishes such as kachori bread with achaar pickles of sunrise lime atop creamy stracciatella, and the best-selling spatchcock makhni, a twist on butter chicken.

“When people can’t afford to eat out as much, they usually prefer to stick to what they know, so we tried to find familiar landing spots [by playing on familiar dishes like] chicken tikka … and saag paneer,” Mathews-Bowden says.

While the ending has left the team “heartbroken”, Mathews-Bowden says he considers it a privilege to have worked alongside the group.

“I feel the sadness, but I’m also filled with pride,” he says. “I cannot wait to see what Ahana does after this, and how her career progresses over the next decade. She is going to leave her mark on the Sydney dining scene.”
—Bianca Hrovat

Izakaya Tempura Kuon is another restaurant casualty, having announced it will finish trade at the end of April.

The highly specialised Wynyard eatery had glowing reviews. Its Japanese tempura coats everything from sea-eel to shitake mushrooms and foie gras in a thin batter, before dipping it in the deep fryer.

“Kudos to Kuon, then, that after a few rounds with its fried seafood, I feel revived rather than ‘call a wheelbarrow and get me out of here’ full,” Good Food critic Callan Boys wrote. “Anyway, back to the tempura. Inject it into my atoms, please.”

Izakaya Tempura Kuon’s owner Kenny Lee says part of the problem is the perceived health aspect of deep-fried tempura. A heavy irony given the investment he made to try and prove the opposite, using high-end fresh produce and cold-pressed oil he imports from Japan at $500 a drum and replaces almost daily.

Lee, who helped to pioneer Sydney’s wave of tiny high-end omakase restaurants, says he hasn’t given up on the deep fryer. After he closes the restaurant at the end of the month, he’d like to reboot the izakaya concept one day in a larger space, with one proviso: “The menu would only be 20 per cent tempura.”

Raja and Izakaya Tempura Kuon join a growing list of closures in Sydney, including Josh Niland’s Charcoal Fish (Rose Bay) and Fish Butchery (Paddington); the Porteno team’s Bastardo CBD location and their Wyno X Bodega restaurant in Surry Hills; and Cornersmith in Annandale.
—Scott Bolles