Mark Best’s Marque, Surry Hills, to close for good
After 17 years in business, one of Sydney’s most innovative and exciting restaurants is closing its doors.
Sydney chef Mark Best will end the financial year by closing the doors of Marque, his renowned Surry Hills restaurant, for good.
“Seventeen years is enough, I think,” the chef and restaurateur says in a bombshell article he published today online. “I like the craft of restaurants and I like the art of it, and I like the customers. (Generally.) But when you’ve spent most of that time pushing against current trends, it’s tiring. I’ve come to the point where I’m happy to move on.
“I’m 50 years old and I’ve got a lot left to achieve and I don’t want to repeat myself. I can honestly say that looking back over 17 years at Marque, I’ve stuck to my guns.”
In a statement, Best, who is also a co-owner of the Pei Modern restaurants in Melbourne and Sydney, said: “The personal investment in a small business takes its toll, and it’s with a combination of a sense of loss, pride and relief that I bring this phase of my career to a close.”
Best says he toyed with the idea of doing something else, more casual, at the Crown Street site — which has two years left on its lease — but decided against it.
“At this point it doesn’t really suit me.”
However Best says he does have something that “for me is quite big” under development.
“Marque has done a lot for me (but) it’s achieved all it can achieve and I need to move on, and that’s with a mix of both grief and relief.”
Marque, which has hovered around the elite ranks of Sydney gastronomy for much of its life, “has achieved far more than I ever envisioned opening a ‘small bistro’ in 1999,” Best says.
“It was fairly evident from the start it was never going to be just that. Many hats, stars, awards and a bit of international renown later, I can look back with pride on what was achieved in this small shopfront on Crown Street. Marque’s proudest legacy will be the young people who in their formative years, have come through its doors, embraced the process and pushed themselves to do the very best they could every day.”
The Marque alumni makes for an impressive roll call of Australian and international restaurant talent. It includes chefs Pasi Petänen, Brent Savage, Dan Hong, Dan Pepperell, Isaac McHale, Daniel Puskas, Karl Firla, Victor Liong, Joachim Borenius, Alex Muñoz, and Lauren Eldridge; restaurateur and sommelier Nick Hildebrandt is also a past staff member.
“My approach at Marque has never been a good business model, certainly,” Best wrote on gourmettraveller.com.au. “I’ve said that 50 per cent of the diners think I’m a genius and 50 per cent think I’m an idiot, and I think that’s a good place to be, but it’s a bit of a reductive position.
“Marque has always been difficult. I didn’t allow it to be easy. When we opened in 1999 I didn’t know what I was doing, and there was a certain cushion of ignorance there that kept me smiling, and from there on in I was too busy learning how to run a restaurant and everything that went into it.
“But is running a fine-dining restaurant in Australia truly any more difficult today than it was in 1999? I don’t think so. If you ran a proper profit-and-loss statement on a fine-dining restaurant, it’d make you want to run for the hills, and your accountant would be a mile in front of you. That’s not what it’s about. Marque evolved into what it is now organically.”