As Hazel joins a growing club of Sydney restaurants with first-name monikers including Jane, Ursula and Margaret, the new all-day eatery at the Hazelhurst Arts Centre in Gymea – with a Michelin-trained chef in its kitchen – has a curious backstory.

When Hazel and Ben Broadhurst bequeathed their home and its three-acre plot to the Sutherland Shire Council in the 1990s, it was overgrown and its owners were well-known spiritualists, who held regular seances in the grounds.

Restaurateur James Lancaster says a 94-year-old local volunteer at the art facility told him she grew up thinking “there were witches and warlocks [there].”

“The arts community had to fight hard with the footy crowd (who wanted playing fields on the site),” Lancaster says. But an arts facility was always the wish of the couple, and Hazelhurst Arts Centre opened in 2000.

(In addition to channelling ghouls and spectres from the beyond, the Broadhursts were interested in organic farming, so they would likely approve of Hazel’s direction.)

There has long been a cafe on the grounds, but Hazel is the arts centre’s first restaurant. Its operators, Lancaster and partner Zoe Wall (who also run the Audley Dance Hall Cafe at The Royal National Park) have assembled an impressive team at the 197-seat Hazel Kitchen & Bar.

Chef Nils Herold started his career in the kitchen at his uncle’s two-Michelin-starred restaurant, Clos St Dennis in Limburg, Belgium.

Herold’s opening dinner menu includes roast duck crown, lobster with seaweed butter, a creamy take on bouillabaisse, three choices of steak and a hazelnut eclair. Meanwhile, a brunch carte features an omelette du jour, and orange and cranberry sourdough; come lunch, there’s vol-au-vents filled with chicken and mushroom, and a prawn katsu sando with curried tartare sauce.

Sommelier Michael Hannken, who previously worked at big-ticket Sydney restaurants Quay and Bennelong, has been given the licence to create a “playful” wine list focused on small, family-owned, organic and sustainable wineries.

“The wine list is a bit quirky, but if you’re not going to try something new in an arts facility, when are you?” Lancaster asks.

They’ve tapped mid-century design touches for the dining room, which is in a separate building to the Broadhurst’s original cottage. In the same way Melbourne’s Heide Museum of Modern Art entwines food and art in the setting of a former home and sprawling gardens, Lancaster points to the mix of ceramic exhibitions and art lessons currently running on the grounds.

“Naming the restaurant in honour of the philanthropic Hazel Broadhurst was important to us,” he says.

They are yet to spot any warlocks in the restaurant’s opening days, Lancaster says, “but there are possums in the roof we’re trying to get rid of”.

Open brunch and lunch daily; dinner Thu-Sun

782 Kingsway, Gymea, hazelgymea.com