Andreas Papadakis is the Greek-born chef with a gift for Italian food and a reputation in his adopted city as Melbourne’s master of pasta.

Now Papadakis has chosen Sydney’s “it” food suburb for his next move, with plans to open a restaurant in Double Bay.

The project will be a Sydney first for Papadakis and business partners Luke Skidmore and Alberto Fava, the trio behind Melbourne pasta bar Tipo 00, Osteria Ilaria, pizzeria Figlia, and Grana Deli.

They haven’t chosen just any street for their Double Bay incursion; the location is on the same Bay Street strip as Neil Perry’s restaurants Margaret and the recently opened $10 million Song Bird.

So, what’s all the fuss about Papadakis, and yet another Melbourne food arrival? Our Melbourne colleagues tell us his gnocchi is cloud-like, and one review for The Age warns: “Pity the carb-hating fool who will never know what it is to break into the perfectly formed tortellini.”

Papadakis confirmed the new hospitality entity, Conferre Group, has secured a site at the Ruby House development, on the corner of Bay Street and New South Head Road, where they’ll open a restaurant next year, but beyond that details are sketchy.

“We’re still working out what we’re going to do,” he says. “We’re not going to replicate Melbourne … [but] we’re not going to open a Japanese restaurant.”

The chef also confirmed they won’t transport the Tipo 00 moniker north, something that might have been difficult because a similarly named (but unrelated) pizzeria operates in Balmain.

Papadakis was raised in Athens and spent summers on the island of Crete in a family that “ate pasta four times a week”. When he was forging a career in restaurants in France, he spent most of his free time jumping the border to Italy.

Hints of all those cultural influences are evident in a repertoire of Melbourne menu hits that includes octopus with 𝄒njuda dressing, pappardelle with braised duck and porcini mushrooms, and tagliolini al nero with ebony strands of pasta flecked with pale squid and married with a briny sauce.

“Tipo 00 is the kind of restaurant that breeds an instant following,” one Melbourne review claimed. Papadakis will be hoping its Sydney sibling will do likewise when it opens in 2025.