‘Leave your table manners at home’ at this new beachside spot with fine-dining cred

In the lead-up to this week’s launch of Table Manners restaurant in Bronte, its social media has been littered with quirky messaging, encouraging budding customers to play with their food and seemingly disparaging its own moniker by encouraging the social faux pas of double-dipping.

While most restaurants tease with pre-launch food shots, Table Manners has a short video of a diner eating pasta by hand at a table set up in a shopping mall. But this isn’t the opening of an all-you-can-eat buffet – Table Manners is a slick neighbourhood restaurant with pedigreed owners and chef with upmarket restaurants Franca and Oncore by Clare Smyth on their CVs.

Table Manners co-owner Alex Cameron is part of the new breed of restaurateurs shirking the old-school local pamphlet-drop approach and pumping funds into a videography and digital marketing specialist instead. “I gave Fortem Media pretty much carte blanche to do something different and fun to promote the idea behind the brand without really focusing on the actual food offering,” Cameron says.

The restaurant might have a slick Blainey North-designed interior, walls strewn with art and a menu where even its sandwich offering is filled with Moreton Bay bug, but Cameron wants its message to be fun. “I hope you leave your table manners at home, enjoy yourself.”

Head chef Luke Churchill (ex-hatted restaurants Parlar and Oncore by Clare Smyth) will plate tuna belly on brioche toast and pair scallops with 𝄒nduja butter and macadamia on its opening menu.

Cameron rates Churchill’s take on crispy spaghetti all’assassina. The Table Manners version deliberately cooks the pasta a little more than you might find in Italy, then brings some dash to the dish with king prawns served on top.

Cameron cut his teeth as group general manager of hatted Sydney venues Franca and Parlar at Potts Point and Armorica in Surry Hills, but he and business partner John Breen ignored those more venue-heavy suburbs for their first restaurant.

“Neighbourhood restaurants are having a bit of a resurgence; you don’t have to Uber in and out,” says Cameron, a local of Sydney’s eastern beaches. “Offering something new to my local community has been the driving force ... bringing my love of European dining to Bronte is the icing on the cake.”

In using the Table Manners name, they also unknowingly rebirthed a restaurant moniker chef Michael Manners used late last century at a restaurant with the same name in the Blue Mountains. There’s another link to restaurant history. Table Manners slides into the space Wet Paint, a 23-year veteran on the strip, traded in until earlier this year. They’ll be doing well if they have similar longevity.

Open dinner Wed-Thu; lunch and dinner Fri-Sun

56-60 Macpherson Street, Bronte, tablemanners.com.au