In a brutal year for Sydney restaurant casualties, a new term has crept into the city’s hospitality lexicon: semi-closure. The upmarket Lotus restaurant on Cross Street in Double Bay served its last dine-in customers on the weekend, but will pivot and remain open for takeaway.

May is shaping as a tough month for Sydney’s high-end Asian restaurants, with Crown Sydney’s Chinese restaurant Silks – described in a 2022 Sydney Morning Herald review as “completely over the top in its opulence, use of luxury ingredients and expense” – closing on Friday, May 10. Lotus also offers a luxe setting, showering Double Bay diners with an interior of “colonial and Chinoiserie decor”.

“Our style of service requires quite a lot of staff, and we’re in a difficult moment for hospitality,” a spokesperson for Lotus Double Bay explains. A takeaway-only operation lowers overheads and still enables Lotus to retain ties with its eastern suburbs clientele.

Lotus is located in the retail space adjoining Double Bay’s InterContinental hotel, a site which sold in March for more than $215 million with plans for a mixed-use revamp that will still include a hotel.

Despite Lotus’ downsizing, Double Bay has generally remained buoyant, with a new hospitality injection on Bay Street led by Neil Perry’s Margaret eatery. Bay Street’s lustre has seen it coined the Rodeo Drive of Sydney restaurants, with the 140-seat Japanese-inspired Tanuki and Bartiga joining the party in early 2024. In coming months, Perry will add to the arrivals on the strip, with Asian restaurant Song Bird, and jazz bar Bobbie’s.

And there’s more on the way. Australian-Korean restaurateur David Bae – who has a small empire of restaurants stretching from Circular Quay to Surry Hills – confirmed he’ll open a mega venue next year in Double Bay’s Ruby House development, on the corner of Bay Street and New South Head Road.

Inspired by venues such as Born and Bread in Seoul, plans for the Double Bay hospitality venue include a boutique butchery, specialising in wagyu, cocktail bar, 10-seat omakase and 80-seat first-floor Korean barbecue restaurant. The venue will be named Soot, the moniker Bae used at his Barangaroo pop-up, which previously traded in the site where he has just opened Astro, a barbecue Izakaya.

Bae says he’s long coveted Double Bay. He won’t be the only new kid on the block in 2025, with California-based luxury home furnisher RH (formerly Restoration Hardware) including a glass-encased rooftop hospitality venue in its Bay Street plans. It also opens next year.