Orkhestra Opens Baptiste French Bistro at The Eve Hotel in Redfern

Baptiste, a French bistro from Sydney hospitality group Orkhestra, is now open inside The Eve Hotel in Redfern — and it's running two happy hours a day, at 4–5pm and 10–11pm, with discounted oysters, burgers, drinks and late-night fries.

The venue takes over the site of Liquid & Larder's Bar Julius. It's the first French restaurant for Orkhestra, the group behind The Apollo, Olympus, Cho Cho San and Greca in Brisbane. Owner-Operator Jonathan Barthelmess runs the kitchen with Head Chef Luke Papalia, and the room serves bistro-style food from day through night.

What's on the menu?

The food is classic French with an Australian accent. Openers include Sydney rock oysters, French onion soup and an onion tart with anchovy and crème fraîche. Larger plates cover Niçoise salad, steak frites with Café de Paris butter and roast chicken with sauce suprême.

Desserts stick to the canon: chocolate mousse, crème caramel and profiteroles. The pricing sits in bistro territory rather than fine dining, and the twice-daily happy hour is clearly built to capture both the post-work drop-in and the late-night trade that a hotel-adjacent Redfern address can support.

Barthelmess framed the concept in deliberate everyday terms. "We wanted Baptiste to have the spirit of a proper neighbourhood bistro: generous French cooking with a lighter touch, shaped by Australian produce, and a lively, welcoming room the local community can make its own," he said. "Whether you come in for oysters and a glass of wine, settle in for lunch or return for dinner, it should feel like somewhere you can enjoy on an ordinary Tuesday."

What does the wine program look like?

The list runs to more than 250 options, drawn mostly from French and Australian producers, plus rare bottles pulled from the group's own collection. Sam Christie, who curated the list, said the depth of that back catalogue changed the equation for a debut French venue.

"As our first French restaurant, we've had the opportunity to raid that collection for some truly special wines," Christie said. "The hardest part has been deciding what not to put on the list."

A 250-plus bottle list is a serious inventory commitment for a neighbourhood bistro, and it signals that Baptiste expects a meaningful spend per head on beverages — historically the highest-margin part of a bistro's operation — rather than relying on food alone.

Who built the drinks program?

Drinks specialist Matt Whiley designed the cocktail offering, which leans on classics with a twist. Two examples define the style: the Ananas Royale, made with white rum, pineapple liqueur and coconut sorbet, and the Premier Eau, combining Cognac, fig verjus and Comté.

Baptiste is open for lunch and dinner seven days a week, taking both walk-ins and bookings. With the Bar Julius site converted, Orkhestra now has a French flag flying alongside its Greek and Japanese-leaning venues — and the dual happy hours suggest the group is betting on flexible, all-day trading rather than a single dinner peak.