Three-Michelin-Starred SingleThread to touch down in Sydney this winter
Bathers' Pavilion is set to welcome California's acclaimed SingleThread for a four-week residency beginning late July.
The Sonoma County restaurant, helmed by husband-and-wife team Kyle and Katina Connaughton, holds three Michelin stars and currently shares the top position on Paris-based global dining guide La Liste, alongside New York's Le Bernardin and ten other establishments worldwide. The World's 50 Best Restaurants has also recognised it as North America's Best in the West.
Managing director Jessica Shirvington framed the announcement within the venue's broader collaborative ambitions. "These residencies are cumulative," she told the Sydney Morning Herald. "Each one aims to raise the bar." The partnership follows two sold-out residencies with three-Michelin-starred British restaurant L'Enclume, held in 2023 and 2025.
Founded in 2016 and awarded its third star in 2018, SingleThread has built its identity around a regenerative 24-acre farm that drives the entire dining program.
Katina oversees the property's greenhouses, orchards and extensive floral operations, with harvests informing the menu on a daily basis.
"At SingleThread, we say we tell the story of today through the eyes of the farmer — really through Katina's eyes," Kyle Connaughton told the SMH. "Guests experience ingredients harvested at peak season that morning and feel a sense of time within that place — but also within the dining room."
Connaughton's culinary background spans a tenure as head chef of research and development at Heston Blumenthal's The Fat Duck, years cooking at traditional kaiseki restaurants in Japan, and time with French terroir master Michel Bras — all of which visibly permeate SingleThread's philosophy.
"Much of what we do at SingleThread is deeply informed by our time in Japan," he said. "It informs our cooking techniques, flavour development and how we build dishes. It also informs our hospitality — a warm, genuine style of service. We do all of that in a way that feels authentically Californian. We're excited to bring that to Sydney and see how it aligns with the space at Bathers' Pavilion — how the Californian and Japanese perspectives can come together."
Preparations are already underway locally. Heirloom produce and botanicals for the residency are being cultivated at Bathers' own farm, Rotherwood, in the Southern Highlands. Executive chef Aaron Ward will lead a small kitchen and front-of-house contingent to Sonoma in April to work through menu development with the SingleThread team directly.
For the Sydney edition, Bathers' dining room will be reimagined with custom ceramics, bespoke flatware and new art installations. The beverage program will draw parallels between Sonoma and Australian wine regions, supplemented by Japanese sake and Old World selections.
The ten-course tasting menu is priced at $690 per person before drinks — consistent with SingleThread's California pricing. Each sitting will open with the restaurant's celebrated hassun course: a kaiseki-inspired sequence of up to ten composed bites presented on handcrafted floral structures incorporating seasonal botanical and natural elements.
"We start with a mixture of wood, moss, floral material and outdoor elements, combined with small bites that are a snapshot of today," Connaughton explained.
"Guests arrive to their first course presented on these structures. It's something we've developed over time, coordinating wooden structures with floral material, and we look forward to recreating that in Sydney. It's very unique."
For the Connaughtons, the scale of this partnership represents new territory. "It's almost like we're creating another restaurant together," Kyle said. "It's not Bathers' Pavilion and it's not SingleThread — it's something else entirely."
The SingleThread residency runs Tuesday to Sunday, across both lunch and dinner service, from 28 July to 23 August.
Jonathan Jackson, 5th March 2026
