When Jan McKenzie flew home from London in May 2000 to take up the job of running Cafe Sydney, the then nine-month-old Circular Quay venue was on an uncertain trajectory. This December, when the restaurant’s chief executive calls time on her mammoth 26-year innings, McKenzie will leave one of the most well-oiled, high-turnover dining rooms in town.

Cafe Sydney’s Hong Kong-based owners, Cafe Deco Group, have locked in a serious talent to take the reins from McKenzie, too: former Fink chief executive Jeremy Courmadias, who spent most of the past decade steering Otto, Bennelong and Quay.

“Some people are good at front-of-house, other people are better at the back end. Jeremy has both skill sets,” McKenzie said.

Courmadias left Fink last year, and recently returned from London, where he helped set up an outpost of New York bar Dante at Claridge’s, the luxury Mayfair hotel.

“I’ve always been attracted to institutions,” Courmadias said of the lure of Cafe Sydney. “Jan has really kept the restaurant relevant.”

Cafe Sydney met an early barrage of lukewarm press and tepid reviews. It had a great 200-seat dining room and stunning harbour views, but what about the service and tucker? “The food doesn’t have to do much. And it doesn’t,” Terry Durack wrote in his August 1999 review in The Sydney Morning Herald.

“The first year was busy, but it was people having a one-time experience, or tourists,” McKenzie said. She needed repeat business if Cafe Sydney was to have a long-term future. “My whole commitment was to build long-time clientele, and relationships with the people around us.”

Starting from the ground up, McKenzie drummed into her team a word she uses often: consistency. It runs from the service to the restaurant’s meticulous upkeep. Take Cafe Sydney’s elevated, stage-like timber floor, for instance. A contractor visits once a month to resurface and oil any chipped or worn areas. A separate French polisher is there every second month. “He’s in here at 3am with a head torch on,” McKenzie said.

Of the menu, she said: “On arrival I felt it lent too much into fusion.” Durack agreed there was room for improvement, assessing only two of the 10 dishes he tried as living up to their potential. But with the trademark doggedness that impressed Cafe Sydney’s owners when McKenzie worked for them in Hong Kong, the young restaurateur from South Australia didn’t go chasing awards or redemption when she was plucked from a management role in London. She made some strategic changes, but stuck to Cafe Sydney’s strengths.

McKenzie ignored early criticism about the tandoor oven she inherited and Cafe Sydney’s signature dish, tandoori salmon. She didn’t pander to fashion. The tandoor stayed, but it was surrounded by specialists in Indian cooking. The tandoori roasted salmon remains a menu favourite to this day, and naan bread is still a big feature on Cafe Sydney’s broad-stroke contemporary Australian menu.

“It’s the fitting and respectable thing to do when your name is Cafe Sydney,” McKenzie said of the early decision to lean in on Australian wine and produce. One-off visitors started to be replaced by regulars. McKenzie watched tables of two return as tables of four, use the private dining room, then book out the venue for their wedding. Second-generation customers roll through, including christenings.

With an annual turnover thought to be pushing towards $30 million, Cafe Sydney is in the very top paddock when it comes to the city’s best performing, most consistent restaurants. If the fact it scored good reviews but never picked up a hat in the Good Food Guide rankles, McKenzie isn’t letting on.

“We have broad appeal,” McKenzie said. “We’re not really a cafe; we’re not fine dining. We’re an elevated brasserie … what we want to do is create a total experience for people.”

Courmadias will work closely with McKenzie until her departure at the end of the year, after which she plans to take a short break before looking at new opportunities.

“In many respects, I just want to reclaim my life,” she said of the restaurant that has consumed her.

Pregnant when she joined, juggling the massive operation with life as a young parent, McKenzie didn’t have time to sit back and consider herself an early female pioneer at the pointy end of hospitality. “I was pregnant, I just worked,” she said.

“There were and still are [hurdles for a woman], but I don’t feel there is so much any more,” she said. “But as a woman you’ve got to prove yourself over and over.”

There does remain one bit of unfinished business for McKenzie at Cafe Sydney. The theft 20 years ago of the David Moore artworks from the restaurant’s bathrooms. “It’s still unsolved,” McKenzie said.