Chefs Nathan Sasi and Morgan McGlone to open Surry Hills wine bar, Bar Copains

In the space of just a few days, Surry Hills' Albion Street has gone from busy grey arterial to hot Sydney eat street.

Earlier this week the Lennox Hastie-led Gildas opened on the strip, then chefs Nathan Sasi and Morgan McGlone announced they'd nabbed a corner site up the hill, where they'll open a joint venture, Bar Copains.

So, what can we expect when it opens in late November?

For starters, it'll be a wine bar with a European bent. Sasi says it will share similar menu DNA with Leigh Street Wine Room, the Adelaide venue he opened then sold after departing Sydney's Mercado restaurant. The list will include wines from the personal cellars of its two owners.

Sarah Watt, fresh from crafting the interior at La Salut in Redfern, will design it.

Sasi and McGlone, who shared time in the kitchen at Husk in South Carolina, have long toyed with opening a venue together.

"With Morgan out of Belles [Hot Chicken], he has more time, and we've always had similar ideas about food and wine," says Sasi, who has Rockpool and The Fat Duck on his CV.

After a spell post Leigh Street Wine Room trading futures and equities, a career change Sasi describes as lucrative but isolating, he followed the call back to hospo. He argues Surry Hills has been strengthened by its mix of residential and commercial.

While Albion Street has a stalwart in Reuben Hills and Middle Eastern start-up Shaffa, the strip was until recently still best known to many as the birthplace of Chur Burger.

But Gildas' arrival and Bar Copains' upcoming birth in the onetime home of a Vietnamese cafe, on the corner of Belmore Street, has put it back on the map.

"Copains is the French word for friends," says Sasi. "It'll be good wine and 12 to 15 dishes."