Capella Sydney review: stellar new hotel a gourmand’s go-to
Serving up French classics for an Australian palette, the food and drink at Capella Sydney have sent it soaring into the stratosphere.
‘You must come to our ‘welcome ritual’,” Jonathan Fambart, Capella Sydney’s so-called “chief culturist” mentions as we check in. Did you say “ritual”? We stare at him, nonplussed. “We’ve made time just for you,” he insists, gently, but firmly.
Jonathan must be a master of persuasion. Or perhaps our resistance is weakened by the signature Capella scent of bergamot, green tea and peony that is filtering through the air in this newest and most perfectly realised of Sydney hotels. Either way, Jonathan has his way. At 6pm we descend from our room to the Living Room, a plush adjunct to the Capella lobby, for our welcome.
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It turns out the ritual is nothing more sinister than a cocktail and some hors d’oeuvres, the latter delivered fresh from the kitchen of Capella’s in-house restaurant, Brasserie 1930. If they had only told us this was a complimentary cocktail hour, they would have seen us hours earlier.
As we sit and sip this delicate aperitif, the effort put into every finer point of this hotel starts to sink in. The welcome cocktail is a case in point. Named Echoes of Eternity, it is a finely wrought paean to Sydney that cleverly weaves together concepts and ideas close to local hearts. Named after the word “eternity” that Arthur Stace spent 35 years scrawling all over Sydney from the 1930s, the cocktail combines Mr Black cold brew coffee liqueur, Starward whisky, passionfruit, coconut and macadamia. The final product, a transparent amber liquid served over a sphere of ice, emerges from a drip-filter contraption wheeled to the table on a drinks trolley. If the flavours (whisky, coffee … macadamia?) sound hard going, nothing could be further from the truth. The drink is light, refreshing, floral, delicious. If this is some kind of cult, I’m in.
You’re not going hungry at your welcome ritual either. Nibble on tartlets of crème fraîche and caviar and feel like a queen.
This is all designed to whet the appetite for dining at the brasserie, of course. Created in consultation with local culinary stars, chef Brent Savage and sommelier Nick Hildebrandt (of Bentley Group fame), Brasserie 1930 is a love letter to French cuisine told through an Australian lens.
Here you’ll find Savage fine-tuning French classics for an Australian palette, with dishes like southern rock lobster with finger lime and tarragon, Flinders Island scallops with brown butter, and whole roasted duck with roasted plums, fennel, spinach and glazed eschalots. Prices are not for the faint hearted – starters range from $28 to $52, with mains mostly hovering between $65 and $85 – but this is high-end escapist dining, where the dishes are finely considered, the produce is immaculate and the room is a twinkling palace of high ceilings, grand windows and vintage lights, serviced by smooth, informed staff. Let yourself go.
There are two bars in which to have a pre- or post-meal drink, the pick of them being Aperture, the gorgeous ante-chamber that fills the lobby between Brasserie 1930 and the Living Room. Furnished with living trees and housed under a soaring glass atrium, Aperture is dominated by Meadow, the light installation of Amsterdam-based Studio Drift.
Floating, balletic lights drift up and down in a mesmerising rhythmic dance, bathing the space in an entrancing pastel luminescence. If there is a lovelier hotel lobby bar anywhere in Australia, I’ve yet to see it.
Much has already been written about other elements of the hotel – the plush 192 rooms with their five-star appointments that include pillow-top beds with custom Italian Frette linen, Haeckels amenities, Dyson hair dryers, full-sized baths, linen robes and Indigenous artworks on the walls. The generosity of the rooms – the smallest are 46sq m and the average is 88sq m – is a revelation; so too is the hotel’s other big drawcard, the exquisite top-floor spa area dominated by a 20m heated pool. The architecture of the heritage-listed Baroque-style sandstone building, constructed in two parts between 1912 and 1930 and for decades home to the NSW Departments of Education and Agriculture, provides an exquisite backdrop to the finished package.
This is the Singapore-based Capella Group’s first hotel outside Asia – it already has properties in Singapore, Ubud, Bangkok, Hainan, Hanoi and Shanghai – and the attention to detail and sophistication is a step up for the Australian tourist experience.
Indeed, Capella Sydney is a masterclass in hospitality, down to the very last morsel. I’ll drink an Echoes of Eternity to that.
Capella Sydney
Perfect for: Sydney staycationists; international guests you’d like to impress; art, food and heritage nuts.
Must do: Capella Sydney's culinary program raises the bar. Go for the welcome ritual and stay for dinner at Brasserie 1930. The buffet breakfast, also in Brasserie 1930, is likewise next level, and the à la carte breakfast menu is interesting and reasonably priced. Experience packages are a Capella specialty, and those with an interest in good food can book a Capella culinary experience. The hotel will curate the experience to your tastes, but those who are in Sydney on a Saturday morning can do a Carriageworks Farmers Markets journey in which Jonathan, or another member of staff, accompanies guests to the markets and introduces them to farmers and producers. You’ll find yourself eating everything from AP Bakery mortadella focaccia to Flour and Stone apple tart.
Getting there: Capella Sydney is at 24 Loftus st in Sydney CBD.
Bottom line: From $750; ‘Capella experiences packages’ for two, $1500