Rising Sun Workshop: The hatted restaurant with community spirit in their DNA

Macaroni and cheese. Lemon, lime and bitters. Hall and Oates. Some things just make sense together.

Ramen restaurant and motorcycle workshop?

That’s something that not many of us, even in our wildest dreams, could have seen as a winning combination. Well, nobody except the team behind Sydney’s insanely-popular, concept-defying ramen/motorcycle joint, Rising Sun Workshop.

For over half a decade now, Rising Sun have been serving their community with delicious, Japanese-inspired fare and operating a fully-stocked motorcycle workshop for hire, with all the tools and experts on-hand to help keep you riding.

I sat down with Rising Sun’s head chef and co-founder, Nick Smith, to talk through Rising Sun’s journey.

It all started with a housewarming party

Nick: “The Japanese thing’s, kind of all accidental. My son had just turned 1, and we had a house warming at the house, and I decided that I’d cook noodles because of the longevity of the noodle, in Eastern ideas, and that went over really well. And I thought that that would be something that we could bring into a 2-month popup (which actually ended up being 6 months) and, somewhat surprisingly, (it) blew up, got picked up in the media, picked up in the local neighbourhood and we became stuck with ramen.”

But ramen alone was never enough for a man so talented as Nick, and he used ramen’s popularity to influence the items which would sit around his signature dish on his menus, leaning on Japanese cuisine’s elements and techniques while avoiding being pigeon-holed as a Japanese restaurant. No mean feat, but it’s something he’s navigated expertly.

Nick: “There still has to be a cohesion between those ramen days and what is our future, which is a little more uncertain, in terms of style.”

So, from such humble beginnings, Rising Sun’s philosophy of serving their friends, evolved into serving their community, and it hasn’t wavered. And it’s that service to their community that has become such a cornerstone of their business model. Not content with offering only food, they decided to do something a little different, a little bolder, a little more special.

They started a community workshop

Nick: “For us it was about creating a commercial enterprise, which is the restaurant, that supports the social enterprise which, in this iteration, is a motorcycle workshop where men and women can come and for a subsidised amount of money—an affordable sum of money—can access space and tools.

“The idea of servicing a motorcycle when you live in a Chippendale apartment is out of the question.”

It’s a business model that has prospered, both in spite of its radical concept and because of it. 

The food side of the operation is the proud owner of Chef’s Hat, the closest thing to Michelin Star in Australia (there is no Michelin Guide down here). A testament to Nick’s never-ending pursuit of perfection and the care he puts into every dish.

The community workshop now boasts scores of paying members, helping locals who otherwise would not have had access to even the space to work on their motorcycles, gain that access to all of the tools and expertise needed.

But What’s next? What does the future hold for a business that has achieved so much already?

Looking to the future

Nick: “I’m now really interested in helping the hospitality industry succeed, because it’s been dealt some really heavy blows and it’s getting really, really difficult to find fresh legs to carry the torch forward.

“I’ve always been really passionate about not settling, in my hospitality career that is. And now I want to find younger, fresher (than me), and try and nurture that in this little incubator.”

This may make Nick come across as an operator that is never satisfied with his lot. Somebody who, almost, can’t see the forest for the trees. But nothing could be further from the truth.

Nick is fully-aware of what he and his partners have achieved with Rising Sun Workshop.

Nick: “I think we’ve done something that, even if we were to walk away from, there’s still going to be a page in Sydney’s little roadmap that Rising Sun Workshop has made a mark, at some point, and is now a reference point for something more. I think that’s success.

“One of the briefs, for me anyway, was that we were open for everyone and for any occasion and I think, at times, we hit that note. That’s in our DNA, that there’s a giving back and that there’s a learning from it.”

That hard-coded DNA is apparent in everything Rising Sun Workshop endeavours to do.

The Rising Sun Workshop DNA

They’re a big presence in the Distinguished Gentleman’s Ride; an annual event which sees thousands of men and women don their Sunday Best and ride their motorcycles through Sydney (and cities around the world) to raise funds and awareness for an array of charities. Since 2012, over $57 million has been raised by 340,000 riders worldwide.

A little closer to home, they host monthly RSW Socials where moto-minded and moto-curious folks can gather in their workshop for talks by guest speakers, a bite to eat and a drink or two.

There’s also Rise & Grind: a monthly event hosted in their workshop where guest coffee roasters come and give free coffee tastings and riders are given a discount on their breakfast.

Restaurant Manager Bec Simmons, along with chef Ellie Hayes O’Brien and designer Eva Balog have created their own restaurant takeover series, Babs, in which they highlight the outstanding array of female talent in the hospitality industry, taking over kitchens once a month with an all-female lineup of hospo heavy-hitters.

Indeed, many hospitality businesses out there claim to want to give back to their communities and their industry, but seldom do much to back up their claims. Rising Sun Workshop is an example of what can be achieved when a business and a community are locked in sync, working together to better each other. 

The hospitality landscape would be in much better condition if more operators followed their lead.