Lunchtime eatery Sana coming to South Eveleigh serving Mediterranean and Middle Eastern bowls

Rocked by the closures earlier this year of Kylie Kwong’s Lucky Kwong restaurant and award-winning bar Re, the railway workshop redevelopment at South Eveleigh has nabbed some incoming talent, with chef-influencer Joel Bennetts to open a new venue there in February 2025.

Bennetts will be hoping his 85,000 social media followers follow him to Sana, the Mediterranean-influenced fast-casual dining venue he’s opening with Daniel Sorridimi, owner of Blackwood in Bondi and Cronulla.

The South Eveleigh development turned a corner in September with the opening of The Grounds Coffee Factory, the Willy Wonka-esque venue attracting plenty of new customers to the budding precinct.

Bennetts, who has a strong CV that includes past-tense Rose Bay fine-diner Pier, and until recently ran the kitchens at Fish Shop and Burger Park, met Sorridimi in Bondi.

“Dan was my neighbour; I’d get my cold brew there in the mornings, and we’d talk about ideas,” Bennetts says.

The duo shared a vision for “bowls and buns” made with high-quality ingredients and dishes that refer to different regions of the Mediterranean including Italy, Greece and Turkey as well as parts of the Middle East.

“The flavour profile is so unique, the spiced lamb mince is like something you get at [a] food store in Lebanon,” the chef says of one of the items headed to the Sana menu.

Bennetts will lightly pickle Korean-style carrots in-house, and serve Japanese zucchini pickle. “The basmati rice is like a mix between lemon rice and herb rice,” he says.

“We want it to be nutritious,” he says, explaining Sana will also focus on sugar-free sodas. “We’re making it ourselves, there’ll be a hibiscus lemonade, strawberry vanilla and pomegranate orange blossom.”

Sana will slide into the former site of Coyoacan Social, a Mexican-leaning eatery that traded in the precinct, opposite the former home of Lucky Kwong. There’s still no word on a new tenant at the Lucky Kwong space, which closed in June after Kwong announced she would step away from professional kitchens.

Shop 8, 1 Locomotive Street, Eveleigh, sanamediterranean.com.au