Rampart descends into Neptune’s Grotto
The chubby-cushioned booths are littered with shrugged-off suit jackets and everyone appears to be leaning into the loucheness of it all. Hand me a martini, hand me one for each fist. I’m in!
I’ve always been wary of restaurants or bars that appear to pile on the performance. I feel silly pressing on Trompe-l'oeil bookshelves to reveal secret entrances. Bother me not with passwords; I struggle enough as it is to remember the one for my Amazon account. Even a velvet curtain across a doorway feels like I’m in a taping of The Muppet Show.
Neptune’s Grotto is the new mondo Italiano restaurant from the team behind Clam Bar, directly upstairs on Bridge Street in Sydney’s CBD, and Taylor Swift fave Pellegrino 2000 in Surry Hills. When I step inside Neptune’s hidden doorway in the shadow of Quay Quarter Tower – home to the likes of investment bank Barrenjoey, Swedish private equiteers EQT and law firm Corrs – I have a sinking feeling I might be in this tacky territory. It’s disarmingly dark – at lunchtime, in summer! – and I must totter down a narrow black staircase. Uh oh. Zebra print carpet. It’s giving off a whiff of Dracula-themed suburban theatre restaurant.