Restaurant Operations

House of Bungalow Opens in Surry Hills as $2 Million-Plus Precinct

Bungalow Collective has opened the $2 million-plus House of Bungalow on Foveaux Street, Surry Hills: an 80-seat Spanish-inspired restaurant, club lounge Below and café inside the heritage Schweppes building.

Hospitality precinct House of Bungalow opens in Sydney
Hospitality precinct House of Bungalow opens in Sydney — neshom / pixabay

Bungalow Collective has opened House of Bungalow, a $2 million-plus hospitality precinct on Foveaux Street in Sydney's Surry Hills that operates from morning coffee through 3am entertainment.

The venue houses three distinct offerings under one roof: an 80-seat restaurant, a club lounge and a café. All sit within the heritage Schweppes building, a structure that anchors the project's design identity and its claim to neighbourhood connection.

Who is behind it?

Bungalow Collective Founder and Director Binura Jayasuriya frames the precinct as the group's consolidated vision for Surry Hills, pairing daytime trade with a late-night offer the area lacks.

"Opening the doors is a significant milestone for us, and we're excited to see that vision come to life," Jayasuriya said.

What does the food program look like?

The ground floor hosts The Restaurant, a Spanish-inspired venue led by head chef Gianni Moretto. Moretto brings more than 20 years of experience: he launched Uma in Perth, created Western Australia's first fine-dining plant-based restaurant at Ten Acre Block, and most recently ran the kitchen at Morena in Sydney. His cooking draws on Chilean and Italian heritage, time in Spain, and travel across Asia and Latin America.

"Opening the doors is a significant milestone for us," Jayasuriya said of the launch.

"For me, it's about respecting the foundations of a dish while finding new ways to interpret it, bringing together different flavours and techniques to create something that feels both familiar and distinctive," Moretto said.

The menu engineering shows the cross-cultural positioning in specific dishes:

  • Rock lobster paella, served with half or whole rock lobster, lobster-head salmorreta, saffron and kombu aioli — Spanish technique with Japanese accent.
  • Kimchi croquetas topped with bluefin tuna, jamón XO and daikon.
  • Smoked eel gilda — a reworking of the Basque pintxo with Gordal olive, guindilla chilli, smoked eel and kabayaki glaze.
  • Westholme F1 Wagyu, koji-fermented and served with black garlic sofrito and piquillo ponzu.

The drinks list sources from Spain's sherry houses plus wine regions in France, Italy, Australia and New Zealand. Signature cocktails include the House Fino (gin, fino sherry, elderflower, honey, lemon, shiso) and The Foveaux (blanco tequila, spiced rum, mango, lime, chilli).

How does the precinct run day to night?

The trading hours reveal a three-shift operating model designed to maximise the building's revenue windows:

  • The Café: Monday to Saturday, 7am to 3pm.
  • The Restaurant: Tuesday, Wednesday and Sunday, 11.30am to 10pm; Thursday to Saturday, 11.30am to 11pm.
  • Below (club lounge): Wednesday to Sunday, 5pm to 3am.

Friday and Saturday nights add live entertainment at The Restaurant from 8pm, with guests directed downstairs to Below for cocktails and music afterwards — a flow that keeps spend inside the precinct rather than losing late-night trade to nearby venues.

The stacked format — café, restaurant, basement club in one heritage shell — gives Bungalow Collective a single-site test of full-day trading in a market where operators are increasingly bundling dayparts to cover Sydney rents and labour costs.

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Elena Vasquez

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News editor covering people, launches and day-to-day practice in Restaurant and hotel operations at The Pass Brief.

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