Woolloomooloo restaurant Riley St Garage is closing

Woolloomooloo restaurant Riley St Garage will serve its last crispy pork knuckle on December 23, part of a wider plan by restaurateur Brody Petersen to cash in his hospitality chips.

Petersen confirmed his Parlour Group has also sold The Village Inn, in Paddington, to an undisclosed buyer.

"I'm not closing Riley St Garage down because it's not successful, but my hospitality journey has come to an end," he tells Good Food.

While rising produce costs, staff shortages, new openings and the curve-ball of COVID placed an unrelenting toll on the industry, Petersen says his decision had been a slow burn. After getting his start with the Flying Squirrel in Bondi, in recent years he's sold Surly's and closed the ambitious Stanton & Co in Rosebery.

"I look back at my 15 years of hospitality, it's been a ton of fun. But I'm ready for a new challenge," he says, hinting commercial property might be his way forward.

The first step in that direction will come at Riley St Garage, a favourite of touring rock bands. Petersen owns the one-time parking spot for Frank Lowy's executives, and will segue its use, leasing it not as a restaurant but as boutique office space.

He'll retain a small stake in the hospitality pie at the iconic Hollywood Hotel in Surry Hills, which he purchased last year. But he says he's not sure it counts as a food venue. "It only does toasted sandwiches," he says. Expect it to stay that way.