Kepos & Co heading to Waterloo's Danks Street

Danks Street in Waterloo is desperately in need of some new food guns to polish its faded lustre, and it may have found one in the form of the hatted Kepos Street Kitchen in the neighbouring suburb of Redfern.

The lunchtime queues at the award-winning restaurant illustrate it can pull a crowd; now Kepos will open a spin-off restaurant at the Casba development on Danks Street.

"It'll be called Kepos & Co and open after Easter," says Kepos' owner-chef Michael Rantissi.

With Fratelli Fresh and Jared Ingersoll's Danks Street Depot abandoning the strip, there are a couple of other white knights lining up to open alongside Kepos & Co. Mosman's Fourth Village is slated to launch there this year, and Les Huynh, the former owner of Blue Ginger restaurant, is also headed for Casba.

"I'm opening an Italian restaurant, Beccafico, with Carlo Lombardo from Big Mama in Woollahra," he says.

Huynh maintains the restaurant boom in neighbouring Alexandria cost Danks Street trade, but believes an influx of new operators will help revitalise it. Rantissi was taken by the setting.

"Kepos & Co will look onto palm trees and a little pond. We've gone for a look that'll be like old Jerusalem. I want to explore another side of the Mediterranean [with the menu] and plan to have mulukhiyah on the menu. In Egypt they do it with rabbit, we'll do it with wagyu," he says.