Chef Neil Perry looks to sell Bobbie’s bar in Double Bay

May 16, 2025
9:45 pm

Getting the right price for Bobbie’s might be difficult for the veteran chef, with some prospective buyers baulking at the rent.

Chef Neil Perry will step aside as chair at the Australian Restaurant and Cafe Association (ARCA) to focus on his business interests, including the future direction of his eight-month-old Double Bay jazz bar, Bobbie’s.

The bar, which sits below his Song Bird restaurant and was opened in collaboration with bar guru Linden Pride from New York’s much acclaimed Dante, is up for sale and has attracted interest from some of Sydney’s top bar tsars. Perry cited unspecified issues relating to the landlord as the reason for the potential sale. “I said I was happy to let it go, if it’s the right price,” the chef said.

Bobbie’s co-owners Linden Pride (left) and Neil Perry at their new bar last year.Edwina Pickles

Getting that right price might be difficult, though. Some operators who’ve inspected the bar, but asked not to be named, baulked at the rent. If no one snaps up the site, that would mean Perry is left with no option but to retain it.

He said the alternative to selling the bar would be to integrate it more fully into his multi-level Song Bird restaurant and tweak the concept and name. Song Bird would then supply its food, and its menu would adopt more of an Asian theme. “We’d probably call it Little Bird,” Perry said.

Perry said if he took the rebranded route with Little Bird, Pride wouldn’t necessarily remain involved. “[Linden] has so much on his plate at the moment in the US.”

This news comes on the back of Perry taking a different tack with Song Bird. In April, he shifted from its strict Cantonese food brief by adding Japanese, Korean, Thai and Vietnamese flavours into the menu. The chef said he wanted the flexibility to explore other parts of Asia, and revive some of the classic dishes from earlier in his career, at restaurants such as Wokpool.

A mint green leather banquette wraps around the main bar at Bobbie’s.Edwina Pickles

Earlier this month, Perry also surprised a few followers when he announced on social media that Song Bird would now offer functions with dishes from his other Double Bay restaurant, Margaret, as well as Italian food from Perry’s now-closed Rosetta. “When you take out the lazy susans, [the space] doesn’t feel that Asian,” Perry said.

Perry doubled down on Double Bay’s hospitality scene last year by opening Song Bird and Bobbie’s, the restaurateur’s first standalone bar, around the corner from Margaret, Next Door and Baker Bleu. It was revealed last year he and his team spent $13 million on the Bay Street development, $3 million of which was on the bar. Perry conceded Bobbie’s didn’t have a smooth launch. “There was a leak that took four months to fix,” he said.

With Perry’s hands full, he has decided to step aside as chair at the Australian Restaurant and Cafe Association (ARCA), the industry body he helped to co-found last May. “I don’t think I have enough time for it,” Perry said, adding he would remain as a member. The association’s chief executive, Wes Lambert, said a new chair would be elected at the next board meeting, at the end of May.