Automata and Silvereye ready to open in Chippendale

• Is Chippendale Sydney's foodiest suburb?

Chippendale joins the restaurant high roller table tomorrow, the first in a series of big-ticket restaurants finally opening in the suburb at the Old Clare Hotel.

While Chippendale has had a smattering of quiet hits in recent years, the suburb where Sydneysiders once visited to be loaded up at Mortuary Station for the journey to Rookwood is suddenly the epicentre of restaurant openings.

Automata opens tomorrow, with Noma chef Sam Miller's Silvereye to follow next week. British celebrity chef Jason Atherton's Kensington Street Social is trailing the field, a mid-November launch now tipped.

Automata has Clayton Wells in charge in the kitchen, one of the senior kitchen crew to depart Momofuku Seiobo in recent times. The former sous chef says the food will follow a similar style to his old haunt, with his own touches.

The opening menu ($88 for five courses) offers smoked eel with onions, black garlic and malt vinegar, another dish of partridge with burnt apple and capers, and pumpkin seed ice-cream, tangelo and sea buckthorn at the tail end.

Designer Matt Darwon's interior plays on an industrial theme, with plenty of exposed concrete and pale timber.

The project has been a long time in the making. Wells used to work for the Old Clare's owner, Loh Lik Peng, in London. "He was keen for me to do my restaurant and backed me in from day one."