Sydney heritage charmer The Old Clare gets a hip transplant
This Sydney hotel opened seven freshly made-over guestrooms in December 2019, just in time for the year of living dangerously.
Sydney’s Old Clare Hotel opened a freshly made-over wing of seven spacious guestrooms in December 2019, just in time to greet a year of living dangerously. But like many city properties, 2020 became a period of readjustment and reinvention, and this heritage charmer has kept pace, routinely offering day-room deals for those who find working from home too hard to juggle and need a quiet respite or 24-hour or 48-hour stays based on compatible check-in and check-out times.
Transformation has been the key since a former 1930s corner pub, The Country Clare Inn (green-coloured Guinness guaranteed on St Patrick’s Day), and adjoining Carlton United Breweries administration building were merged in 2015 via a four-storey atrium and raised walkway and transformed to a triumphantly chic hotel. The site is at Chippendale on the southwest fringe of the Sydney CBD, close to Chinatown, and The Old Clare’s emergence set the scene for the precinct to become known as “Hippendale”, a hub of cafes, brasseries, small stores and laneways of Asian hawker-style stands collectively known as Spice Alley. Add street murals, pedestrian zones and The Old Clare’s stand-alone diner, Automata, helmed by Clayton Wells, and you have an accessible precinct with a pleasant buzz.
But when the hotel’s upstairs restaurant, Silvereye, closed abruptly in August, 2016, alarm signals sounded about the fate of yet another Sydney dining room offering show-off degustation menus. Head chef Sam Miller, formerly Rene Redzepi’s sous-chef at the acclaimed Noma in Copenhagen, returned to England. There was speculation about the wisdom of opening a “top end of town” restaurant at the bottom end of town.
But the former Silvereye space, all long ribbed-leather wall seating, original pelmets and blackbutt parquet floorboards, has been seamlessly reconfigured and reborn as a north wing of guestrooms overlooking the Broadway main drag and slender Kensington Street. The category is dubbed art deco in tune with the era of the pub below and augments existing industrial and contemporary accommodation options. The décor throughout is playful, without the relentless funkiness of, say, the QT brand or the cheek of Ovolo. John Chesterman of Huppauf Chesterman, lead architect on the original project, was again involved, ensuring a cohesiveness with the hotel’s public areas, supplementary 62 guestrooms, plus rooftop bar and pool deck, which had a refresh in 2019.
As with the best hotel design, the devil is in the detail, from statement artwork, proper big bathtubs and good reading lights to fun touches such as a record player and stash of LPs. I put on a Marvin Gaye album while getting ready for dinner and can attest there’s space to swirl and twirl. Then a swing through the lobby and a stickybeak in the pub, past the old dentist chairs (and drilling apparatus), arc lights and assorted ephemera, to dine at Automata. It’s an exquisite degustation meal of intensely flavoured morsels sourced via an impeccable produce chain and served in a pared-back warehouse-style space with an open kitchen. Spanner crab and fermented chilli pasta with black lime and marigolds? Oh, yes. Pumpkin seed sorbet with bitters meringue and preserved meringue? Bring it on. Then it dawns why Silvereye may not have worked, tucked out of sight above a pub, too rarefied and a touch unknowable. Much better to dine in plain sight and then tuck up in a huge bed on that reimagined second floor, I say, singing along to Marvin. Suddenly, it’s midnight. “Got to give it up ...”
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A trio of art deco treasures
Grace Hotel, Sydney: This 1920s neo-gothic pile with art deco interiors is the former York Street HQ of the Grace Bros department store empire.
The Savoy, London: Filled with priceless geometric pieces and ornamentation, marble floors and sultry lighting; suites in art deco or Edwardian styles.
Bentley South Beach, Miami: Curvy, white and heritage-savvy, this three-storey “Miami moderne” 1940 beachfront gem had an interior revamp in 2020.
