Sidart the latest Auckland restaurant to be shuttered

Ponsonby Road stalwart, Sidart, has closed for good, leaving its owner and chef Lesley Chandra feeling like a failure, but nevertheless he will notch it up as a learning experience.

"After careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision to close Sidart effective immediately," Chandra wrote on Facebook.

"This decision was not made lightly, and we are deeply grateful for the support, memories, and experiences we’ve shared with each of you over the years."

Chandra told RNZ on Tuesday evening that he made the call a fortnight ago and the restaurant's last service was on Saturday night.

"It was financial reasons, it wasn't doing so well," he said. The lease on the site was up and the restaurant was now in liquidation.

The fine dining restaurant was opened by Auckland hospitality icons, Sid and Chand Sahrawat in 2009. In 2019 the restaurant was named Cuisine Good Food Awards’ Restaurant of the Year. In 2021 executive chef Lesley Chandra bought Sidart from the Sahrawats.

Chandra, who was born in Fiji and moved to Auckland when he was ten, said he signed the papers to takeover Sidart right before Covid-19 lockdown struck the city.

"Doing takeaways as a fine dining restaurant wasn't my thing," he recalled.

"I'd never owned a restaurant and it was still shut for three months till we had the first people come through. It was a good learning experience, doing something different. We had lots of fun with it."

Chandra worked with Sid Sahrawat to open inner-city modern Indian restaurant, Cassia, and continued alongside him when he took over the French Cafe in 2018 before taking up ownership of Sidart.

"It was one of my dream restaurants to eat at when I was younger... owning it became a dream come true," he said.

Its closure stirs up a whole lot of emotions.

"As a chef it's like a failure. You don't want to fail, but it is a failure. Your confidence and your ego gets damaged a bit, but that's something to get over and learn from.

"You want to be brave and stuff for the family so you can't really show it. It's obviously all the emotions."

Chandra planned to take some time to consider his next move.

"I might just take a bit of time away and look forward to going to work and being creative and not worrying about the admin side of the job."

However, this experience won't deter him from owning a restaurant in the future.

"This is learning from my mistakes and maybe next time doing it in a different way."

Sidart joined a rollcall of nearby favourites that have called it a day including SPQR which last year closed after 30 years and Ponsonby Road Bistro which shuttered after 18 years.

Earlier this year, the Sahrawats sold tandoor-inspired spot KOL on Ponsonby Rd to Ruchi and Sapan Parikh.

“We are deeply saddened to see Sidart close its doors," the Sahrawats said in an email to RNZ.

"The past couple of years have been tough for all hospitality operators and our hearts go out to owner Lesley Chandra and his team as we know they worked extremely hard to try and keep the doors open."