Full steam ahead
Pip and Andrew Goldsmith must have thought the gods were against them.
After a catastrophic summer in which the northern beaches were locked down due to a frightening COVID cluster — most of their collection of Boathouse venues are located on the northern peninsular and the lockdown there was devastating for their business — the opening of their new Boathouse Rose Bay was then threatened by conditions out of their control.
As the March launch of the venue rolled around, the skies opened and Sydney was drenched with flooding rains that continued for weeks. The Boathouse Rose Bay was forced to close for maintenance for a whole day soon after opening and trading was hampered for weeks by the ceaseless deluge.
For businesspeople less experienced than the Goldsmiths, the litany of setbacks could have seemed almost personal. How much were the couple and their staff meant to take? Fortunately, the Goldsmiths have the fortitude to merely shrug off the difficulties.
“In a way it kind of helped us,” says Andrew with a rueful laugh. “We are always so busy, it was quite good for the staff to be able to get into it without being overwhelmed.”
To describe the Boathouse collection of restaurants and cafes as “busy” is something of an understatement.
Found across 10 locations in Sydney and beyond, the Boathouse Group has become one of the city’s fastest-rising and most-loved hospitality businesses, known for its knack of taking washed-up or under-loved waterfront venues with lovely bones and converting them through beautiful coastal design into treasured local drawcards.
The trick has worked in places draped across Sydney’s harbour and beach hotspots, from Balmoral on the north shore and Shelly Beach near Manly, to the far-northern peninsular at Palm Beach and Whale Beach, and across Pittwater in Patonga.
Each venue has a slightly different feel — some sell homewares, some are relaxed cafes, others kiosks or restaurants, and Patonga even boasts a hotel — but the principle is always the same: take something old and make it fresh again, while serving crowd-pleasing food.
And now it’s the east’s turn.
The Boathouse Rose Bay has opened in what many in the eastern suburbs still refer to as the Pier restaurant site, on New South Head Rd, even though it was most recently trading as Regatta restaurant. When Regatta closed in late 2020 — one of the city’s many hospitality victims of COVID — the Goldsmiths saw an opportunity to make their first foray into the east.
The premises now house two Boathouse outlets: a kiosk offering Boathouse signatures including beer-battered fish and chips and buckets of prawns, and an upmarket restaurant that occupies the main part of the building.
The restaurant spreads out from the famed 'runway' dining room that runs along the length of the pier, to a second space that was used at Regatta as a bar. Now, too, find tables on an outdoor balcony overlooking Rose Bay to Point Piper.
Regatta’s old dark blue tones have been replaced by white walls and a coastal, almost beachy vibe, while huge bunches of flowers greet the diner upon entrance.
Clearly the changes have been welcomed. Visit any day or night of the week to find the place absolutely packed, a magnet already for the eastern suburbs diner keen to try out the new kid on the block.
For the Goldsmiths, the Rose Bay opening could not have come at a better time. The kiosk launched on January 1, during the northern beaches lockdown, and in many ways the venue may have saved the business.
“The shutdown before Christmas was pretty tricky for us,” Andrew says. “That’s our really busy time and the Avalon cluster really tarnished the northern beaches brand. So it was nice to have Rose Bay to work on. We straight away redirected our staff to Rose Bay and got started.”
He says he felt initially nervous about plans for Rose Bay, with its high-end restaurant ambitions that are a step up from most of the group’s other dining offerings (with the exception of Palm Beach’s Barrenjoey House).
The restaurant’s upmarket feel — dishes range from scallops with buttermilk, kaffir and chilli and yellowfin tuna with finger lime, sesame and soy to lobster ravioli and scampi linguine, with prices up to $45 a dish — puts it directly into competition with other fine diners in the area including Catalina, and in Bondi, Icebergs.
“I was worried that we had gone a bit too serious on the food because there are already restaurants in the area like Catalina doing that,” Andrew says. “But it seems to be pretty well received. People are saying that they want somewhere a bit special and people love sitting on the water.
“Interestingly enough, with the COVID thing, we have found that the cafe world has taken a bit of a beating. People are now wanting to have an experience that’s more controlled and less chaotic. They don’t want to wait in queue. So this suits.”
For the Goldsmiths, 2020 was a challenging year, but nowhere near as difficult as 2019, when the business almost went under, crippled by changes to bank lending laws that left them unable to complete the renovation of their Patonga property — their most ambitious project, comprising a boutique hotel, a cottage, a kiosk and more.
The couple was forced to take on investors and had to refinance their whole operation. It was a situation that left some suppliers complaining of being burned.
“We had funding dramas when we did Patonga, and it was just a complex one,” Andrew says. “We were trying to refinance and we were screaming into winter. It was a very challenging time for us. We had offers to sell off a few of the venues but we were really keen to keep all the venues together.
“In the end, we were fortunate at the time to find people who wanted to keep us going. We took on investors and kept the business alive. We had to do the best we could. Interestingly enough, Patonga is going really well for us now.”
He says the business has been able to regroup and rebuild out of a distressing period. He adds that if the challenges hadn’t been presented in 2019, the business would have been hit even harder by COVID in 2020.
“The whole thing made me appreciate a lot that our financial dramas were sorted out before COVID. If we weren’t on a solid ground when that happened, it would have been a catastrophe.”
For now, the Goldsmiths are looking forward to sunnier days with full venues and diners regaining confidence both in cafes and restaurants. They hope that eastern suburbs locals will fall in love with the Rose Bay venue and return to it again and again.
“We want to create venues that people will feel a part of for a long time, and become lifelong guests,” Andrew says.
The Boathouse Rose Bay
594 New South Head Rd
theboathouserosebay.com.au