Author of the New York Times 2022 bestseller, RecipeTin Eats: Dinner, and with a newly launched cookbook, RecipeTin Eats: Tonight already the #1 Amazon Best Seller in Books, Nagi Maehashi’s ever-popular recipes have earned her a bit of cash to splash. And splash she did, dropping $7 million on a Victorian-Gothic dwelling in the suburb of Hunters Hill late last year—a cut above the suburb’s $4.05 million median. Now, the Recipetin Eats author, Nagi Maehashi’s Hunters Hill home has a $950,000 renovation ahead of it, with construction starting in the affluent Northern Sydney suburb earlier this month.
Famous for road-testing her recipes seven times over before ever hitting publish, Nagi’s cookbooks, now almost essential to our night-time rituals, can be found creased open on many kitchen benches, their pages lovingly splashed with the side effects of a hearty meal. Based on a 2011-founded blog of the same name, her first book, RecipeTin Eats: Dinner, was the country’s bestselling non-fiction title in 2022 — it even outsold culinary heavy hitters Jamie Oliver and Yotam Ottolenghi in its first year on the shelves.
Despite calling the c1883 cottage, ‘Daybreak’, her forever home, it seems fate had other plans. First, Nagi tried putting the home back on the market mere months after settling but decided to remove it soon after. A few months later, a submission to the local council with almost a million dollars worth of alterations and extensions was filed, outlining her plans to include a new single garage and associated driveway, reconfigure the rear living areas, relocate the central stairs and “provide higher levels of residential amenity.”
The purchase and subsequent DA submission marked the move away from Mona Vale on Sydney’s north coast, where the former Brookfield Multiplex senior executive lived in a beautiful beachside five-bedroom abode with her trusty sous-chef, Golden Retriever Dozer. Nagi spent less than four years in the waterfront home, selling it in early 2023 to Clean Energy Partners’ Colin Liebmann and his wife, Julia, for $6 million for a tidy $2.5 million profit, thank you very much.
The new Lower North Shore pad sports an ultra-charming façade complete with iron lacework, hedge-lined pathways, a transverse gabled roofline, chimneys of rendered masonry with classical stepped cornices, stone steps, and the perfect symmetry you’d expect from a property of its historic standing. The gardens, described as “park-like”, sprawl to the rear of the home and encompass a swimming pool, vine-covered pergola, courtyard, shed, and studio with one extra bathroom.
The almost-million-dollar renovation will include the demolition of internal walls and the existing carport, relocation of the central stairs, the transformation of the formal dining room into a study and stair recess, an extension of the kitchen and living rooms to form an open-plan rear family area, the installation of a new single garage and laundry, and various landscaping spanning paving, fencing, planting, and pruning.
After a “challenging negotiation process” the architect announced via an Instagram post that they were thrilled to have secured planning development approval for the stunning heritage property. “Navigating the complexities of heritage regulations and council requirements is no mean feat, but with perseverance and clear communication, we achieved DA approval,” they shared.
The home was sold to Nagi off-market by BresicWhitney in December 2023. Before that, it sold for $4.75 million in November 2019, which was $450,000 above what it sold for earlier that same year. Before being taken off the market, the home had been listed with Tracey Dixon of McGrath.
You can get your hands on Nagi Maehashi’s brand-new cookbook, RecipeTin Eats: Tonight from Paper Plus.
The solar-heated swimming pool and spa are shaded by a well-maintained, established garden. The new plans include a brand new pool fence.
Mature trees surround another of the property’s winning assets: the backyard studio, housing a studio, bathroom and kitchenette – which is sadly also soon to be demolished.
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