The food lovers’ haunt and chef hangout on Liverpool Street has been reborn as Vin-Cenzo’s, after the venue began “copping a lot of flak” from regulars.
When cult Darlinghurst restaurant Bar Vincent sold in February, incoming co-owner Nathan Sasi said he wanted regulars “to come in and think nothing has changed”. When the restaurant reopens on Thursday, it will land with a new interior, a different menu and a new name: Vin-Cenzo’s.
So, what happened? “I think naively we thought it’d be easy,” Sasi’s business partner Morgan McGlone said of picking up where the former owners, Andy Logue and Sarah Simm, left off at the chef’s hatted restaurant.
McGlone said it was a culmination of factors that led to ditching the original plan and settling instead on a full reboot. There was push-back from some Bar Vincent regulars to the introduction of the online booking system (it used to be run by phone), then complaints – which spread online – about differences in the food and atmosphere under the new watch. Gripes about music were the last straw.
“We felt we weren’t being ourselves,” McGlone said. “We were copping so much flak, it wasn’t the venue we envisioned … we need to do what we do best.”
The chef-owners at Bar Copains and Bessie’s restaurant in Surry Hills decided to bring forward renovations at Bar Vincent – painting the walls yellow and blue, installing a “burgundy-maroon” banquette and uncovering the windows. They’ve also made some big changes to the menu.
“It’s definitely Italian-leaning, but broader European,” McGlone said, hinting that the kitchen might even serve Hungarian or Croatian dishes (co-owners Nathan and Sali have Hungarian and Croation heritage).
Vin-Cenzo’s opening menu is Italian-centred, however, with Ligurian fish stew, passera di mare with yellow belly and vongole, and pasta dishes of rigatoni with tripe and sweetbread ragu, and chicken and mortadella agnolotti in brodo, alongside a duck liver parfait.
Vin-Cenzo’s might’ve unburdened itself from the comparisons with Bar Vincent, but it will look in the rear-vision mirror to honour Tre Scalini, an earlier restaurant that operated out of the Liverpool Street building.
McGlone researched the 1980s hotspot after hearing stories of its legendary lunches and clientele, including the late Kerry Packer. While Vin-Cenzo’s won’t replicate Tre Scalini’s combination of “mango and Galliano”, they’ve found room on the opening menu for a modern take on a dish that prominent food critic Leo Schofield once described in a restaurant review as one of the best pasta dishes in town: trenette con pesto with green beans and potato.
The recalibrated restaurant will also morph at the end of dinner service into a late-night supper club. “We have this [late] licence,” McGlone said. A pruned-down version of the main menu will be on offer, with Vin-Cenzo’s tapping into what its owners are betting on as a yawning gap in the Sydney offering. The plan is to open until 2am on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights.
“We want people to be able to pop in late for a bowl of pasta and a bottle [of wine],” McGlone said.
Open lunch and dinner Tue-Sat; supper club (until 2am) Thu-Sat
174 Liverpool Street, Darlinghurst, @vincenzos_sydney
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