If you’re in Sydney and coming up short on things to do for the rest of the month then turn your attention towards the numerous bars and restaurants dotted around Surry Hills. Plenty of new businesses have been popping up in recent months, including Ace Hotel, Pelligrino 2000 and Lennox Hasting’s new high-end tapas bar, Gildas. Along with established favourites like Butter, Polly, Chin Chin and Alberto’s Lounge, they are all coming together for a two-week food and drink festival under the banner Surry Thrills, busting out some specially curated menus and events to try and cobble together a sense of community – much like Newtown does each year for the one-day-only Newtown Festival.
With 18 Surry Hills businesses taking part in the inaugural Surry Hills, you’d be hard-pressed not find something from the stacked program worth firing up the group chat for. The calendar of events kicked off today and runs up through to September 30, with everything listed as either ‘Play,’ ‘Dine & Drink,’ or ‘Dance.’
The program reads like your typical cultural festival. There will be artists talks and listening parties, a few record fairs so you can dig around in the crates and comedy sliding up with live entertainment. Pepper on a few dance parties like a takeover from dependable record label Astral People at Harry’s on September 18.
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Pellegrino 2000, one of Sydney’s best new Italian restaurants, will be doing a special aptertivo hour session on some of the dates. Nomad will be throwing down a Surry Thrills lunch menu offered on most days over the next few weeks. Butter will be doing bottomless booze and the kitchen’s typical fried chicken and Champagne schtick. And probably the most exciting for discerning diners is Danielle Alvarez (best known as the masterful former chef of Merivale’s Fred’s) taking over the kitchen at Alberto’s Lounge with Melbourne’s Rosheen Kaul on two separate nights (September 20 and 27).
Here is the full list of all Surry Hills businesses taking part in ‘Surry Thrill’s over the next few weeks:
- Ace Hotel Sydney
- Alberto’s Lounge
- Butter
- Chin Chin
- China Heights Gallery
- DOC Pizza & Mozzarella Bar
- Gildas
- Golden Age Cinema & Bar
- Harry’s
- Hollywood Hotel
- Nomad
- Paramount House Hotel
- Pellegrino 2000
- Piermarq
- Poly
- Shaffa
- Soda Factory
- Tio’s Cerveceria
