The Gidley: Where the Inspiration Came From
How a trip to New York and a Californian quail shaped The Gidley, and what bottles we’re opening this month to celebrate.
A Late Booking in Greenwich Village
In 2019, Jimmy, Wazza and Kimmy travelled to New York with a fairly open brief. They wanted a new concept, something distinct from Bistecca but with the same kind of guest in mind. They did not know exactly what they were looking for, only that they would recognise it when they found it.
The one free evening they had was a Monday, and they tried repeatedly to get into a restaurant called 4 Charles Prime Rib in Greenwich Village. They added themselves to the waitlist and were offered a table at 11:45pm, which only made them more curious about what the fuss was about. A last-minute 9:30pm booking came through instead, and they went.
The first thing you encounter at 4 Charles Prime Rib is the doorbell. There is no signage, no queue, nothing to announce the place from the street. You ring, and you are let into a small, dark room of timber panelling, leather banquettes and candlelight, the kind of space that feels like a secret the city has decided to keep. Inside, it is all unhurried service and well-executed steakhouse classics, prime rib at the centre of it. The whole experience felt exclusive, jovial and welcoming at the same time, which is a difficult balance to strike and a rare one to find. The waiter even made fun of Wazza’s jacket on the way in.
Along with 4 Charles, they visited Peter Luger, McSorley’s, Keens, Amor y Amargo, Raines Law Room, Gramercy Tavern, Dante and ZZ’s Clam Bar. Taken together, the trip shaped The Gidley and the Liquid & Larder venues that followed, whether through concept, food, beverage, design, service or simply the feeling of being in a room that knows exactly what it is.
Jimmy, Wazza and Kimmy left knowing they had found the thread they were chasing. The American steakhouse, that great dining institution, told in a room with a real sense of occasion.
How the Idea Evolved
The name has a history, though not one we dwell on. King Street, where The Gidley sits, takes its name from Governor Philip Gidley King, the third Governor of New South Wales. The street gave us the name. From there, the Norfolk Room followed naturally, Norfolk Island being an Australian territory sitting out in the Pacific, in the ocean that separates this country from the Americas. The names connect, the tribute ends there.
What The Gidley became is not a copy of any single New York room. When they returned from that trip, they had notes, photographs, receipts, and a general sense of what they were chasing. The design process that followed was less about replication and more about distillation: what made those rooms work, and how do you build that feeling in a basement on King Street?
The New York steakhouse, at its best, is a social institution as much as a restaurant. The places where the room itself has a personality and the dining is almost incidental to the theatre of being there. Confident without being showy. Generous without being excessive. The kind of place where you order a large steak and a large red and nobody thinks any less of you for it.
That energy was one part of what the boys building. The other was something closer to home. As the concept developed, it reached back into a particular slice of Australian memory: the early 1980s, when opulent dining among the affluent was something people actively aspired to be part of. A glamour that was confident without being self-conscious. The kind of hospitality that understood a great night out is also a performance, and everyone in the room has a role to play.
The Gidley sits somewhere between those two things. The American bones, the Australian character. A room designed with moments in mind, details that reveal themselves over the course of an evening, things worth noticing if you are paying attention.
But the original American spark was always there, and as the venue came together, it ended up written into The Gidley in a detail most people walk straight past. The logo.
The Gidley Logo and Illustration
Two Californian Quails flank a champagne fountain, rendered in a vintage illustration style that feels like it belongs on the wall of a century-old members’ club. The quail is California’s state bird, but it also lives on Norfolk Island, in the Pacific, the very ocean that separates the two countries. One small bird, native to California, making its home on Australian soil in the water that sits between them. It is a quiet symbol of the thread that runs through the whole place: an American idea, given an Australian home.
The illustration work did not stop there. Inspired by Ludwig Bemelmans, the Austrian-American artist whose warmly chaotic scenes graced the covers of The New Yorker throughout the mid-twentieth century, we commissioned Australian artist Jeff the Peff to create what we came to call the boozy dinner party. A bustling, irreverent illustration of a night at The Gidley, full of character and barely contained revelry. The kind of image that rewards a second look.
What started as a single commission has since grown into a series. Over the years, Jeff has created illustrations marking moments and events that have taken place within these walls, each one added to a collection that now lives on our bottle serves. A visual record of the life of the room, drawn in a style that feels as much a part of The Gidley as the timber panelling and the candlelight.
What The Gidley Has Become
That is where the origin story ends. A doorbell in Greenwich Village, a name borrowed from a street, a bird that lives on two sides of the same ocean. The idea was always clear enough. What nobody could have planned for is what came after.
The Gidley opened, and the room took on a life of its own. The dark corners filled with regulars who claimed their tables. The lounge became somewhere people arrived early and left late. Staff who came for a season stayed for years. Guests who came once brought someone new the next time, and that person brought someone else. The kind of loyalty that cannot be designed into a venue, only earned by it over time.
What The Gidley is now belongs less to the people who built it than to the people who filled it. The concept may have started in a notebook somewhere over the Pacific, but the character of the place lives in the room on any given Tuesday night. In the table that has been coming every month since the first year. In the staff who know the regulars by name and by order. In the quiet understanding that a great room is only ever as good as the people inside it.
We are proud of what we built. We are more proud of what it became.
California Wines and a Special: What’s Happening At The Gidley This Month
Throughout July, our wine list features a dedicated California page, curated by Emma Chappell, our Head Sommelier. Emma has selected a range of bottles that she believes make the strongest case for the region, spanning styles and price points, and a rotating selection of three to four wines available by the glass in the lounge.
I wanted to showcase both the wines people expect from California, your Cabernets, your Chardonnays, your Zinfandels, and the ones they’ve probably never encountered. Sparkling, Syrah, Trousseau, even Italian varietals like Dolcetto and Grenache. Few wine regions can offer this kind of range, from cool coastal sites to warm inland valleys. And a lot of the winemakers on this list are leading the way on sustainable viticulture, organics and biodynamics. That felt worth putting front and centre.
The lounge is also running a new dish for the duration of the promotion: Pastrami beef rib with cabernet glaze, pickled cucumber and horseradish. It is not a subtle plate, and it is not meant to be. It is the kind of thing that makes sense with a glass of Californian Cabernet beside it.
by the glass in the lounge, we’re pouring everything from the 2019 Robert Mondavi To Kalon Cabernet, which has real depth for its age, through to the Arnot-Roberts Syrah, which is lighter, sleeker and more youthful. All of it works with the charred, spiced ribs. We’ve kept pour sizes flexible so guests can taste their way through and land on their own favourite.
The 4th of July lands in the middle of all this. The Gidley is not the kind of venue that makes a fuss of international public holidays, but a glass of Californian Cabernet on Independence Day, in a room built on an American idea, feels like the right sort of indulgence.
That, in the end, is the whole point of The Gidley. You come in, the door closes behind you, your shoulders drop, and the city goes quiet for a few hours. A low-lit room, a glass of something you have not had before, a rib worth ordering. The story is only ever there for those who want it. The rest is just a very good night out.
The lounge is open through the week, no reservation needed. The California feature runs throughout July, with the full bottle list in the dining room and wines by the glass in the lounge. Come and find your new favourite.
California as a Wine Region
Here is something most people get wrong about Californian wine. They picture one thing: big, warm, high in alcohol, a little obvious. The reality is a state that runs cold along its coastline, where Pacific fog sits over the vines until late morning and the temperature can drop more than fifteen degrees overnight. The wines that come off that coast have more in common with Burgundy than with the sun-soaked cliché.
That gap between reputation and reality is exactly what makes the region worth your attention right now. Napa still produces Cabernet Sauvignon with the structure and depth to stand beside a premium piece of beef, and it does it as well as anywhere on earth. But it is the cooler corners that reward the curious: the foggy stretches of coast turning out Pinot Noir and Chardonnay of real restraint, and the younger growing areas down towards Santa Barbara, some of the most interesting reds being made anywhere today.
What ties it together is a particular kind of nerve. California took the great grapes of Europe, planted them somewhere completely different, and backed itself to make something new rather than something borrowed. We rather like that.