$2 million Pacific Club Bondi Beach opens on Campbell Parade

When a restaurant from the designer behind Mr Wong, Felix and Victor Churchill is unveiled, Sydney diners know to take note.

Rushcutters Bay-based Michael McCann has had a heavy pull from overseas clients in recent years, his work popping up everywhere from Turkey to the US, but last weekendthe McCann- designed Pacific Club Bondi Beach swung open its doors.

Co-owner Matt Williams confirms rumours they’ve punted more than $2 million on the project.

And it shows. The tiles under the bar were hand-carved in India, a 1950s Bondi Beach scene has been painstakingly recreated as a mosaic, the removable floating brass fireplace hand-crafted by Coloforge, and the detail on exterior joinery extraordinary.

“We wanted something that looked like it had been here a long time,” says Williams, who has had a broad hospitality career as a bar owner, publican and organiser of food festivals.

They haven’t skimped in the kitchen either, snaring chef Bret Cameron, the former head chef from chef-hatted Harvest Newrybar.

He’ll oversee a luxe oyster bar and cook at a hand-crafted wood-fired grill.

The all-day venue kicks off with burnt orange and wattleseed porridge for breakfast, moves through lunch dishes including charred octopus with fermented capsicum and pork collar with blackened cabbage, and for dinner you can tuck into flounder with pickled mussels, warrigal greens and aniseed myrtle.