“I’ve always loved this property, as they always had such an amazing pedigree of chefs when I was coming up, some who are now dear friends,” says James Viles, the new Culinary Director of Park Hyatt Sydney. “Alessandro Pavoni really put this place on the map and Ross Lusted as well. They did some special things.” Now it’s Viles’ time to stamp his mark on this landmark property with its aspect towards the Opera House.

It’s been a tumultuous few years for Viles, closing his highly regarded regional fine diner Biota in Bowral, a restaurant which he says he saw himself in for life. Now stability is what he needs personally, he says, while professionally the support of like-minded people to push ideas forward is a real boon for him.

“Quintessential Sydney,” is how he describes his new home, that’s more like an understated, opulent residence, he says. I’ve seen first-hand over the years, from the Southern Forests of Western Australia to windswept Flinders Island, that Viles is a chef who feels a need to connect with the environment, and the wilder side of Australia. His persona as an adventurer documented from Instagram to his book Due North, may seem at odds with such a lustrous harbourside setting but it offers Viles a stage and an audience. Enthused, Viles says, “we have a captive audience mate.” High end travellers seeking Australia on a plate.

“It’s taken me two or three years to get my head around where I want to go and what I want to do,” says Viles. “The last few years helped me understand the next stage in my career as a cook, which is what I am, and really understand that [diners are] even more savvy and they’re even hungrier for connection than they ever were.”

A signature restaurant, Dining by James Viles, is currently in development, and will reposition the property as a destination diner in Sydney that’s “somewhere you want to go for dinner or lunch and feel like you can more than once a week,” says Viles. Degustation is out and in its place is a menu of large format dishes cooked over coals, focused, and elevated, approachable, and immersive. “You don’t have to come here and drop $300 on an 8-course degustation but there’s still a lot of storytelling, which I particularly love.”

The look will be rugged but refined, he says, with beautiful, earthy tones of materials and “all of these beautiful ingredients that come out of these rugged, harsh environments in Australia.” If that rugged vision of this vast country is one icon, then the restaurant opens up onto another: Sydney Harbour, the water just 5-metres away. “You can smell the ocean,” says Viles. A strong focus around sustainable, ethically-sourced seafood is something that the chef is enjoying. “I haven’t cooked seafood from the ocean for over a decade and all this amazing product that I can tap into, it’s like a new challenge.”

Sea urchins out of Sydney, octopus from Bass Strait, marron from Western Australia and mud crabs from northern New South Wales all the way up into the Top End are figuring in Viles’ menu R&D. Australian salmon – a much-maligned ocean species different to farmed Atlantic salmon – may make an appearance says Viles, as a rillette served simply with malted sourdough.

Viles is committed to using pasture-raised meat, utilising a dry ageing cabinet, and he’s currently engaging with many of his old producers, as well as new ones. While he doesn’t have the space of his former Bowral property, he’s found a place for a rooftop hive.

While Dining by James Viles is still in development in-room dining and the menus at relaxed harbourside venue, The Living Room are changing. At the latter think: fresh, handmade burrata with the best tomatoes and basil, roast tomato oil and salt, or a southern calamari and gulf prawn salad with shaved fennel. “Like sitting on the Italian Riviera,” says Viles. “It’s citric heavy, great ALTO olive oil, and beautiful Australian capers. Honest, humble, and super fresh.”

For in-room he’s taken inspiration from his own tastes. “I have really good Nepalese guys here and they made me this lamb curry one day for a staff meal and I said this needs to be on in-room dining with the roti and everything. So, we have a lamb neck curry on. There’s a whipped chickpea salad with fresh cauliflower. It’s very Sydney: everything’s really fresh and produce focussed.”

Any thoughts that Viles as a city chef is tethered would be premature. “I plan to take time out each year to go bush and develop menus, which is something I wanted to start doing with Biota and never got the chance,” he says. “Out bush solo, eating from the land and nothing else; taking myself out of my comfort zone. That’s when creation can really happen unforced.”

Related news: “We had no intention of closing. I love that place,” James Viles reflects on the closure of Biota