Experience luxury at Sofitel Sydney Wentworth
It opened in 1966 and has hosted society soirees, scandals, celebrities behaving badly, even royals dancing the night away and victory parties for prime ministers. Has it reclaimed its glam crown?
The most storied of hotels have always been places of intrigue and gossip. Of famous somebodies and ambitious nobodies. Of illicit encounters and nefarious goings-on. Sydney’s Wentworth, opened in December 1966, has long been central to a parade of society soirees, gala events, scandals, celebrities behaving badly, even royals dancing the night away and minor crooks on the lam. Oh, if these walls could talk. Careless whispers and all that. But a second golden era has just dawned with the $70m refurbishment and rebranding to Sofitel Sydney Wentworth, just in time for the diamond jubilee of Accor’s global Sofitel brand, which added the hotel to its management portfolio in 1996.
So it’s bonjour to a fresh and more compelling French emphasis and, in particular, a thorough upgrade of food and beverage outlets by House Made Hospitality collective, which has created a precinct within the dowager hotel. Suddenly, the bars and lounges of this landmark property on Phillip Street, at the financial end of the northern CBD, are again buzzing with the after-work crowd and in fashion with ladies who lunch.
Bar Tilda and its adjoining restaurant on the lobby level are a whirl of soft jazz, coloured drinks, young staff in snappy attire, and a merry hum of conversation. Seafood dominates the menu and dishes are mostly designed to share, but not before Dan or one of his fellow waiters commence proceedings with a “bread and butter service” ceremony that’s worthy of a Las Vegas magic show. Expect creamy Pepe Saya butter whipped vigorously into soft peaks and sprinkled with watercress. Add jersey milk cheese softened with wildflower honey. We tear chunks off a fresh saltbush focaccia loaf and hoe in with gusto.
On level 5, Bar Wentworth spreads as an indoor-outdoor space across the garden courtyard. It’s crowded but comfy on my Friday night stay, with plenty of benches and stools, resort-style furniture, tiled floor with geometric designs, clusters of chairs, and views across Phillip Street. A bar twinkles with coloured aperitifs and dapper waitstaff zoom about. Its neighbour is Delta Rue restaurant, a big 160-seater with bright decor, velvety banquettes, murals and terrific light fixtures, from lanterns that hang like upturned lotus to standard lamps with wicker shades resembling conical hats. The stated design vision is of a 1920s villa in Hanoi’s Old Quarter, and the French-Vietnamese cuisine a homage to Indochine in its spicy, herby flourishes. Go for the fiery chilli-dusted calamari and cool off with a crunchy, lime-spritzed spanner crab and green mango salad. Or flag down the banh mi trolley for a baguette customised with your favourite flavours.
Breakfast is served in this long, lean space, too, with buffets at either end. Coffee, as throughout the hotel, is very good, as it needs to be in a city that’s mad for espresso and finicky about foam.
House Made Hospitality has paid great attention to beverage offerings, too. And “sober cocktails” are in abundance. Make mine a blood-orange San Spritzo. Meantime, a Presidential Visit concoction goes all the way with LBJ, commemorating US president Lyndon B. Johnston’s 1966 visit (expect bourbon, single malt, root beer, mixers, and wafts of smoke). Martini imbibers will find a wide range, from the likes of saltbush with green apple vermouth to a Tilda speciality featuring frosted lemon sherbet and aromatic pepper. There’s even a selection of martini garnishes, from anchovy-stuffed olives to pearl onions. It’s all very James Bond, shaken and not stirred, circa 007’s debonair peak in the 60s.
But let’s roll back even further. The site’s first development as a hotel was in the 1800s, its name honouring politician and explorer William Charles Wentworth. In the early 1950s, Qantas transformed the site into staff offices and a city check-in terminal for its jetset travellers. Demolished in the 1960s as the CBD skyline began to spike, the modest site was again reworked. Its new semi-circular minimalist architecture was considered brazen at the time. Some considered it wonderfully Swinging Sixties, while others damned it as a spectacular eyesore.
Next door was its equally modern neighbour, the new Qantas House, on the corner of Hunter Street, with wave-like glassy contours and almost sci-fi lines. Some decades later I worked in Bligh House at the rear block of Bligh Street and would sashay around the “Wenty’s” lobby with my spiral-bound notebook in search of celeb sightings. It was there I tasted my first souffle, which somehow landed in front of me while I was interviewing Viv Richards. Life would never feel quite as glamorous.
Those early eras and the roll call of guests, from noble to nefarious, have been well recorded, especially by the late newspaper columnist Buzz Kennedy, who chronicled the first 25 years in a comprehensive coffee-table book. He wrote of “history being made here” by the famous and influential, of staff attending to the most preposterous needs of celebrities, of grand dinners and “fantasy” balls. There’s Diana and Charles waltzing stiffly, Andrew and Fergie hand in hand and looking decidedly glum, the voguish trendsetters, from Stuart Membery to Jenny Kee, arriving in kaleidoscopes of colour.
Add stars such as Marlon Brando, Sophia Loren and Johnny Cash, a European archduchess or two, and writers of the ilk of Frederick Forsyth turning up and dodging the paparazzi. For one Variety Club annual Melbourne Cup lunch, a horse was brought in to enliven proceedings and led up the stairs to the Grand Ballroom. My great friend Sally Anne worked at the hotel for almost a decade in the 90s when the then Sheraton Wentworth was the epicentre of Sydney’s social scene.
She joins me for a swirl-around of its new iteration and we are cheered by the enduring presence of the mirrored ceiling in the Grand Ballroom plus the enormous and almost blinding crystal light fixtures that illuminated many a society soiree. I have one distinct memory from the 80s of a flatmate ringing me at 2am and asking if I could drive in and rescue her from a party that was getting out of hand in the suite of a rugby star. “I think his manager has died on my lap,” she whispered. “Or maybe he’s just dead drunk.” OK, so I hopped in my Honda hatchback and roared in. Fortunately, it was the latter scenario, so we tucked the chap into bed, discreetly left and neither of us blinked an eye. It was a Saturday, it was the Wentworth, so why would we have expected anything less?
So upon checking in last week for a two-night stay, my head is spinning with stories and a mild expectation that something bizarre might happen. And so it does. I check in (or so I think) as Susan Kurosawa. By the time I reach Room 1749 I have a new identity. “Welcome Kurowska” is the message on my TV screen. Just like that, I am Polish, a mysterious countess. I try, unsuccessfully, to reclaim my real identity but in-house technology is having none of that so I decide to embrace it. No one cares, either way. Sally Anne has decided I am much more of a Natasha Fatale, the Russian spy of Rocky and Bullwinkle 1960s cartoon fame. My husband refuses to be addressed as Natasha’s Mr Big accomplice, Boris Badenov, so the joke peters out and we drop our fake accents. And, frankly, just as well.
Back in Room 1749, on the top floor facing Phillip Street, the layout is snug, with big wall-mounted TV, corner table and comfortable armchairs, partitioned unit for mini-bar, Nespresso machine and tea-making apparatus, plus a Sofitel MyBed with a cloud-like top layer. There are sheers and blackout blinds, but they don’t protect against a whooshing sound that could be persistent wind or the air-conditioning, but it’s slightly disconcerting.
Good reading spotlights by the bedhead get big ticks, but it’s a stretch to say the room is memorable in any way, particularly the small bathroom, with shower over the tub and a tiny bathmat, but trying to reconfigure the contours of what is essentially a heritage building would be nigh impossible. There’s a generous supply of full-sized pump packs of Pierre Balmain unguents but all are locked in wall brackets, so collectors of miniature toiletries may well despair.
The Australian design firm behind the revamp is hospitality specialist FK and the chosen term is “modern heritage”. It’s not a bad label by any stretch, but the old gal is still a glamour puss, a little bit Hollywood, a whole lot Sydney, the sort of place a veteran journalist like me can turn into a Polish woman of mystery in the misdirected click of a keyboard and no one bats an eye.
In the know
Sofitel Sydney Wentworth has 436 guestrooms and suites. It’s ideally located to visit the Royal Botanic Garden, NSW State Library, heritage attractions along Macquarie Street such as The Mint and Hyde Park Barracks, plus Circular Quay and the Sydney Opera House. Bookings are recommended for restaurants. Book by November 29 for 25 per cent off stays of at least two nights from December 2 to March 3, 2025. Significant discounts apply to members of the free ALL Accor loyalty guest program.
Susan Kurosawa was a guest of House Made Hospitality.
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