Helm Bar & Bistro — Restaurant in Sydney

We booked ‘Cockle Bay Yacht Club’ exclusively, for an end of year staff party in December 2022. I believe that amazing venues deserve recognition and positive feedback when its warranted - and Cockle Bay Yacht Club is worthy of the highest accolades.

Located on the water in Darling Harbour overlooking Cockle Bay, this gorgeous venue screams ‘summer vibes’. The stylish, light, and breezy interiors make you feel like you’ve been transported to a modern, elegant, and chic yacht-club in the Hamptons.

Don’t let cooler weather deter you though… their sensor-driven rooftop closes at the first sign of rain, not to mention the indoor heaters that can be turned on and off at your request. Rain, hail, or shine, Cockle Bay Yacht Club will deliver the best experience possible for you and your guests.

From start to finish, their Event Sales Director Belinda, will guide and assist you in every single aspect of planning your event. Like helping you choose food & beverage package options to suite your budget and numbers – and help you put together a finalised menu (while accommodating all dietary requirements). And this just as ONE example. Belinda is an absolute professional, and incredible at what she does. Her team are no different…

On the day of the event the general manager, kitchen, bar/waitstaff manager, event manager, security, DJ, and all of the ‘on-the-floor’ team will work together seamlessly, to bring your event to life and help create the best experience possible for you and your guests.

Specifically, Simon and Christian (who work very closely with Belinda), went above and beyond for us on the night of the event. They were super friendly and approachable, extremely professional, flexible, and accommodating. They both checked in with me several times throughout the night and answered every single question I threw their way. They are absolute pros and implemented their respective roles/responsibilities impeccably.

The food is deliciously top-notch, and the variety of beverages (both alcoholic and non-alcoholic) cater to everyone!

From my subjective viewpoint and firsthand experience, I can genuinely and confidently recommend Cockle Bay Yacht Club for your next function or...

Visited: September 2016

Helm's a pretty decent establishment for lunch, located at an excellent location - Darling Harbour. It's right by the Sealife/Wildlife/Madame Toussand attractions, and it has pretty good people traffic right outside. There seems to be two separate areas for it (a ground floor with tables and shade, and an upper floor - which I didn't check out).

The food was good - ordered some paella, had Peking duck pizza (peking duck!), fish and chips, among others. I liked the peking duck pizza, though don't count on it tasting much like the actual peking duck. Quite loved the fish and chips - fish was right off the kitchen so it was crispy, and chips were good.

I find the service - excellent. Empty water pitchers at our table were constantly being replaced, without even asking. Servers are always smiling, and the tables are quickly cleaned up.

That being said, it's good to note that you HAVE to keep an eye on your food as seagulls are on the look out for any chance to grab something off your plate. It so happened that one swooped down on our neighbouring table's pizza as the waitress was serving it to them - grabbing the ham/bacon topping off. The restau replaced it for free of course!

There are a ton of seagulls in the area, and a lot of them land on the tables and shade of Helm Bar. I'm not sure if the issue is just with me but I find that the open air feel of this place is a hygiene problem waiting to happen - especially with the cutlery just sitting on the tables, and the birds just landing in and around the place, even on the tables.

The guys here do try to shoo them away, and try to quickly keep up with leaving customers so the birds don't get at the leftovers.

Reposting from my...

NEVER Ever visit this place, otherwise known as Cockle bay yacht club!! they pre book you in, take your money (Thousands $$) then deny entry for any excuse so they fill the space your group had booked with new patrons. We had an event booked at this place for a 40 year old bucks night, we all took the bus to this place and when exiting the bus we all took off our rubbish and left over cans to place in the bins outside before entering, there wasn't that much. It was around 5pm so still daylight and the security guards & upper management denied us entry due as they said they saw us putting our cans in the bin!!! If we were a hens party this would be different story. After a few calm and hard conversations about the thousands of dollars of our money they already had as we had pre paid for this event, we asked to supply us all refunds as they are not for-filling the service promised they said no refunds and just to bad for us. I found the security guards & Upper Management to be extremely disrespectful when we were trying source a solution. They did not give us any respect being 40+ males or consider any compromise!! They look for any excuse to deny entry and took our money, they are day light thief's and will take your money when they get a chance. They then called around all other venues to not let us in because naturally we had hard discussions with them due to our money already in their pockets and not letting us in.. I highly suggest to go somewhere else where they will not steal your money and you cant do anything about it. MY ADVICE IS NEVER VISIT HELM BAR! Go somewhere else as there are plenty of other locations and friendlier...