Hawksmoor, the British steak and cocktail restaurant group that Will Beckett and Huw Gott founded in Spitalfields in 2006, has confirmed that Sydney will be the location of its next international expansion. The announcement, made this morning, confirms what the industry has been speculating about since Hawksmoor signalled at the end of last year that its international programme would extend beyond New York.
The Sydney site — in a heritage-listed building in the central business district whose specific address is not yet being disclosed ahead of lease completion — will be the group's ninth overall and will operate the full Hawksmoor format: whole native-breed beef cuts dry-aged in-house, a cocktail bar programme anchored by the group's award-winning bartending team, and the warmth and energy in a formal room that has been the brand's defining characteristic since its Spitalfields days.
The New York Precedent
The New York opening in 2021, which arrived during a particularly challenging moment for the hospitality sector globally, is the reference point for how a Hawksmoor expansion outside the British Isles operates. The group transplanted its philosophy, supply chain relationships and management culture to a new market, adapted its sourcing to include American dry-aged beef alongside British imports, and produced a restaurant that was, by most accounts, both immediately successful commercially and genuinely recognisable as Hawksmoor.
The New York experience informed the group's approach to international expansion in several important ways. The hospitality labour market, the specific sourcing requirements for the beef programme, the licensing environment and the expectations of a new market's dining public all required local understanding and local relationships that could not be imported. Hawksmoor took eighteen months to develop the New York site before opening, and that preparation time is credited with much of its subsequent success.
Sydney will get a similar preparation window. The group has been in conversation with Australian cattle farmers, beef ageing specialists and the Sydney hospitality community for several months before today's announcement, and is in the process of building the local management team that will run the site with the same autonomy that Hawksmoor's UK general managers operate under.
Why Sydney
Australia is, for a beef-focused British restaurant group, a market with a self-evident logic. The country's beef culture — its cattle breeds, its grazing tradition, its consumer literacy around provenance and breed — is among the most developed in the world, and the Sydney restaurant scene has the international food culture and price tolerance that a premium Hawksmoor experience requires.
The city also has a significant British and European expatriate community and a well-established pattern of destination dining from domestic and international visitors, both of which reduce the new-market risk that can slow an international restaurant's early trading.
Beckett and Gott have spoken previously about being selective about international expansion rather than pursuing a programme of rapid global rollout. Sydney is the second international location in four years — a pace that reflects the care the group brings to each new opening and the length of time the preparation requires.
The Hawksmoor Sydney opening is targeted for the first quarter of 2027. Further details on the site and the team will be released in the second half of 2026.