When Fink group – with its blue-chip venues Quay, Firedoor and Bennelong – jettisoned plans in July to open a restaurant in the sprawling Surry Hills Village, it was a blow for the under-construction development. But there’s some festive cheer for Cleveland Street food lovers, with a hatted Italian chef and one of Sydney’s rising star restaurant groups now headed to the development.

Federico Zanellato, owner-chef at Pyrmont’s two-hat LuMi restaurant, confirmed he’s a starter at Surry Hills Village with an upcoming restaurant, which will open mid-2024. The yet-to-be-named Italian eatery will share DNA with Avoja, the pizzeria he opened last week in Manly. “It’ll be a [wood-fire] pizzeria restaurant … with a bigger menu,” he says.

House Made Hospitality, which has aggressively expanded its portfolio to 10 venues, and includes Lana and Grana restaurants at Circular Quay and Promenade at Bondi Beach, will also add three more to the new development’s tally next spring at the Wunderlich Lane precinct, part of Surry Hills Village.

House Made Hospitality director Scott Brown says all three will be Asian-inspired, following the success of their recent launch of Easy Tiger restaurant at Bondi. Easy Tiger chef Andrianto Wirya will oversee the food at the new Wunderlich Lane project. Wirya has Mr. Wong and Queen Chow on his CV, and a strong interest in South-East Asian cooking courtesy of his Indonesian heritage.

“We thought there was a gap in the market for Asian [at the Redfern end of Surry Hills], and we have a lot of Asian pedigree in the group,” Brown says of the decision to make it the focus across the three venues: an upcoming restaurant, a separate all-day cafe-wine bar and a cocktail bar. They’ll slide across two floors of a heritage building on the site, a former Bank of NSW.

Brown explains House Made was lured by a mix of a 100-room boutique hotel, 120 apartments, an office building and fresh food hub.

When Fink jettisoned the project in July, the group declined to detail specific reasons behind the move. As yet, there’s been no announcement on a replacement operator for the site where it planned to open a 160-restaurant under a giant glass-roofed structure.