Luke Nguyen remembers taking trips into the city with his parents to buy Doc Martens and Nike gear.
Now the Vietnamese-Australian wunderkind chef returns to the same shopping mecca as a "culinary curator".
Nguyen oversees a revived Paddy's Markets in central Sydney with a sprawling food hall rivalling London's Borough Markets, boasting 48 venues where visitors can eat and drink late into the night.
Rich multicultural cuisines ranging from Korean fried chicken, banh mi and crab dumplings to Spanish tapas and Mexican tacos are a love letter to the city's diverse communities that Nguyen is passionate in promoting.
"It's all really diverse, which is what Australia is all about," he told AAP while sipping a Japanese beer on a warm Sydney afternoon.
"I love how you can graze through this market, walk down the hall, get some dumplings, grab a gozleme, grab some doughnuts, grab some skewers, and then you can grab a steak and bring it home from the butcher."
The four-year, $20 million transformation comes after a protracted legal battle that went all the way to the NSW Supreme Court where stallholders were forced in 2024 to relocate internally.
The Hay St markets development was spearheaded by Doltone Hospitality Group, whose executive chairman Paul Signorelli also has deep connections to the site.
His Sicilian father migrated to Australia in 1954 and started off working in a fruit and vegetable shop at the historic Paddy's Markets, which dates back to 1834.
"It's about having food that's paying homage to the environment," he said.
"In the early 1950s, a lot of migrants of my dad's generation - Maltese, Italian, Lebanese and Greek - worked in this very floor where you stand today."
In a nod to his roots, he has restored a red truck that his father brought decades ago to transport fresh produce and grow his business.
"There were traders here growing fruit and vegetables, coming here and selling wholesale to Sydney. They then moved on in 1975 to Flemington and this place became a bit dormant."
It later became a hub for souvenir, mobile phone and knock-off clothes shops but it fell on hard economic times during the pandemic, with occupancy rates dropping to about 40 per cent.
The precinct still attracts about five million people a year but Mr Signorelli is hoping to double that with the addition of the culinary element.
Customers and retailers will benefit from having licensed alcohol sellers allowed to stay open past midnight in order to energise the district, Sydney Markets and Paddy's Markets chief executive Dale Doonan said.
Mr Signorelli's cosmopolitan vision for a bustling food hub had been years in the making and inspired by his international travel, likening it to a Leonardo Da Vinci or Michelangelo painting.
"An artist gets a blank canvas, he gets a brush and he paints what he sees in his mind," he said.
"We're no different in business ... you've got to sit back, put your mind to what you want to see your business look like and then execute."
