Inside Neil Perry’s New Restaurant Song Bird

There’s no stopping Neil Perry.

You can almost smell the sizzling spring onion and fragrant steam rising from the glossy har gow as Neil Perry talks through the menu at his new multi-level, Cantonese-style restaurant, Song Bird, the latest addition to his empire in Sydney’s Double Bay. “We get a three-kilogram fish, take the side off and prepare it for 10 or 12 people so it’s a real celebration,” he says. “We also do a stir-fried fish covered in chilli and incredible sweet soy-chilli flavours, for a nice balance of salty and sweet.” The whole fried chicken, he adds, is a must for any large table and the roast duck is set to become a signature.

Across four decades, Perry has steered some of Australia’s biggest restaurant successes: Rockpool outposts around the country, Blue Water Grill, Spice Temple, Rosetta. He’s served as Qantas’s creative director of food, beverage and service for 27 years and won The World’s 50 Best Restaurants Icon Award earlier this year, joining global heavyweights such as José Andrés and Dominique Crenn. This level of expertise all but guarantees that Song Bird will operate with a professionalism that you might not be able to see but will feel from the moment you arrive. Even converting the Mid-Century Neville Gruzman-designed former office building on Bay Street into a multi-space dining venue (complete with jazzy underground bar Bobbie’s) needed a seasoned hospitality pro’s clarity of vision. Back of house, an entire room is dedicated to dry-ageing the Wollemi ducks for Perry’s Peking duck and dumb waiters ensure food can be levered between levels. Pointing to stacks of steamers, the chef rattles off minutiae about finishings and specs. “That’s what experience looks like,” says Samantha, who also works in the venues, along with the couple’s daughters, Indy and Macy, plus Perry’s elder daughter, Josephine.

So what does decades of hard graft look like on the plate? “He never does anything too cheffy, he just cooks what he likes to eat,” says former protégé Corey Costelloe. That includes the best ingredients courtesy of long-standing relationships with producers. “It’s extraordinary how different prawn toast tastes when you make it with fresh Spencer Gulf prawns instead of a pre-peeled product,” says Perry. On the share-style menu, Sommerlad chicken from Sun Farms features in white-cut chicken with ginger and shallot, while salt-and-pepper calamari is made with angler Bruce Collis’s southern squid.

Along with Margaret, Next Door and Baker Bleu, the Perry Precinct is complete (for now, at least). “Neil Perry’s influence on Double Bay has been extremely positive,” says Woollahra mayor Richard Shields. “His venues have been instrumental in the area’s revitalisation in recent years, helping to transform it into a foodie destination.”

When you drill down to what makes Perry get up each morning and tie on his cinnamon-brown apron for another day on the pass, it’s not awards or acclaim. “I want people to walk away thinking, ‘I just had a really great time and I want to come back.’”

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