Chris Lucas's Chin Chin Sydney set to be unveiled

The kitchen alone at Chin Chin Sydney beats the overall fitout budget for many harbour city restaurant openings in 2017. It's a poorly kept industry secret that the kitchen's price tag is more than $1 million.

Throw in the payroll of an assembled A-list of chefs, which has just added a new head chef, Ben Torrance (the long-serving senior sous chef at Sepia), to a team already brimming with experience including: executive chef of Chin Chin Sydney Graeme Hunt and executive chef of Chin Chin Melbourne Benjamin Cooper.

Owner Chris Lucas sidesteps talk of the final total cost of the restaurant, but his reimagining of the lower floors of the Griffiths Teas building in Surry Hills is finally set to be unveiled.

"It was vacated in 1971. It's ready, we're just being held up with some final boxes to tick - for instance, they have to replace the footpath," he says.

Chin Chin Sydney will hold some industry events before giving punters a glimpse of its interior in late September, the first look in 46 years.

And it is impressive. The original floor was restored and reinstated. The same for the pressed metal ceilings downstairs.

"I didn't want to just replicate Chin Chin in Melbourne," Lucas says. "The building's bones are great and we've respected that and created something casual and fun that is still serious about the food.

"Sydney is going to get an amazing building back, and hopefully a great restaurant."