Sydney

REVIEW The Merivale group’s homage to the French brasserie is well realised. The faithfully recreated room, which could so easily be a tired cliché, is full of energy and movement and has a lightness to match its urban surrounds. A friendly, enthusiastic floor team does a great job on the perennially busy floor. Classic dishes […]

REVIEW You can still order a schooner of Reschs with confidence, but The Four in Hand isn’t what you’d call a classic Sydney bloodhouse − its plasmas screen the netball as well as the rugby, and the look for most of the punters speaks of healthily diversified investment portfolios. And while the bar menu offers […]

REVIEW Here is a restaurant writ large in size, form and aspect – a heritage wharf building with views of harbour and bridge, the gardens of Barangaroo, a cruise ship or two, its two storeys decked in timber floors and beams, its white linen-clad tables lit by a cascade of tiny pendant lights. Flying Fish […]

REVIEW At last count, Surry Hills had 42 trillion venues where you can peck at a nifty little salad or poke at a spicy smudge of Asian fusion on the end of a ceramic spoon. So if that’s what you’re looking for, look elsewhere. You’ll have plenty of options. It might be pretty, it might […]

REVIEW You can try and kid yourself by sticking to the raw and cured section of The Fish Shop’s menu, and while you’ll be rewarded with a knockout pickled octopus and white bean salad (speckled with punchy hits of dried olive), the real action is in the deep-fryer. Order a potato scallop before you even […]

REVIEW Ever wondered why friends who live in Bondi never leave? A few slices of pizza from Da Orazio might help you understand their predicament – fewer than three years after opening, it has locked itself in as one of Sydney’s top pizza joints, and probably the fanciest, too, the grey-and-white industrial fit-out attracting a […]

REVIEW Of course, they could just get by selling drinks. Dead Ringer is the second venue and the first restaurant from the good people who brought us Bulletin Place, the Sydney CBD bar that may very well be the benchmark for quality cocktails in the state. The libations here are as soigné and crisp as […]

REVIEW A fragrant half-shoulder of lamb is brought to your table by a smiling waiter, the interior hums with instrumental Levantine music and your bill arrives in a 1980s Turkish comic book. Efendy does Turkish well, and it gets the details right. The menu starts with hot and cold meze: pastirma and hummus speckled with […]

REVIEW There is no shame in popping into The Dolphin Hotel for a postwork snack and a glass of wine at the bar to help you wind down. Pizze champion the toppings without crowding them, and boast a 48-hour ferment on the dough. Or you could sneak into the wine room, which takes influence from […]

At Momofuku Seiobo the food of Barbados has been given a new voice in the most articulate way, writes Pat Nourse, and it’s performing on song.

Another reason to head to the beach this summer: Sean’s is open for breakfast.

In this year's shuffle, 40 chefs from 16 countries swapped restaurants for one night. Here's what went down when Brazilian chef Alex Atala took over Sydney's Momofuku Seiobo.

Guillaume will serve its last soufflé at the end of this year.

The elements that make dining fine are present and correct at Eleven Bridge, the new incarnation of Neil Perry’s flagship.

Maurice Terzini’s reboot of the Dolphin Hotel is bold and playful, with fiendish attention to detail. Meet the new pub circa 2016.

This restaurant is now closed.

REVIEW The cavernous, gorgeously restored Art Deco lobby of the Primus Hotel is an impressive setting for its signature restaurant. With an open kitchen, carpeted floors and blue and Burgundy banquettes, the dining space nails the grand hotel vibe, even if the well-meaning but slightly shaky service doesn’t. Chef Ryan Hong’s continent-hopping menu might be […]

REVIEW Schooners of Reschs, a pie-warmer, AC/DC blaring from the speakers and a pool table. The Unicorn’s new handlers, the guys from Mary’s and Porteño, aren’t out to modernise the classic Aussie pub so much as reboot it. Out go the poker machines, in comes a renovation sympathetic to the glories of the site’s timeless […]

REVIEW For decades this hallowed site was Claude’s, first French, then not French, then even less French again. Then it was something else. Now it’s St Claude’s, and if the name (and the offer of a twice-baked Gruyère soufflé) is intended as some sort of doff of the hat to the history of this two-storey […]

REVIEW Tiny drunk Japanese men. They’re everywhere: on the business cards, the menu. They make such a rich graphic statement that you almost wish there was a corresponding eatery back in Tokyo named for wasted Australian businessmen. The crowd packing the bar and tables, though, is young, hip and very Surry Hills, throwing down Salaryman […]

REVIEW No one would ever accuse Pablo Tordesillas of pulling his punches. In his days at Otto and at Brisbane favourite Ortiga, even at his most technical, flavour remained paramount. And so it is here on Hyde Park. The room and service might lean to the anodyne side of polished, and the name is the […]

REVIEW Regatta not only pokes out onto the waters of Rose Bay, it’s also culturallyofRose Bay. Boats bob gently on the swell outside the glass of the pretty, gently maritime-leaning space, just as the room rustles with pressed linen and grown women address their fathers as “Daddy”. (Well, we assume that was her father.) Damien […]

REVIEW After being given the full Merivale treatment, overhauled, opened up and with plenty of built-in patina, The Paddington is abuzz again. It serves what is essentially a pub menu, albeit one conceived by Ben Greeno, a chef whose brilliance earned Momofuku Seiobo three stars from this guide. Almost every table is laden with the […]

REVIEW Like Mario Testino working with Kate Moss, a certain magic happens when Stefano Manfredi meets flour and water. Hand-rolled pasta, be it trad ravioli (bouncy with burrata and basil) or experimental maccheroncini (earthy from kamut flour and salty with ricotta salata), is consistently excellent, and comforting (eyes on you, veal ragù). Yamba prawns, smoky […]

REVIEW Every neighbourhood needs a place like One Ford Street. Not too fancy, not too plain, it’s as welcoming and comfortable as a friend’s kitchen with an easy-to-love menu and a wine list with depth and surprises. In an annexe behind the Cricketers Arms Hotel, in an indoor-outdoor room with pickles on the shelves and […]

REVIEW An apartment-block courtyard might not seem like the most soigné setting for a restaurant, but this complex is called the Casba, and you don’t have to squint too hard before the palms and pond seem simpático with a menu rich in dates and cumin. Israel is the inspiration for Michael Rantissi’s cooking both here […]

REVIEW Kensington Street bears the hallmarks of a restaurant rolled out by a chef with a lot of other restaurants. That chef is Jason Atherton, the most successful of Gordon Ramsay’s protégés, captivating diners with gleaming fit-outs, smart-casual dining and big, inclusive menus in London, Hong Kong, Manhattan and now Chippendale. Some attempts at local […]

REVIEW “DINE DRINK DANCE” reads the motto on the Harpoon Harry website, just in case the name didn’t already alert would-be customers to the fact that this probably isn’t the place to bring nonagenarian relatives or the otherwise infirm. If James Brown’s design for this glammed-up pub dining room, bold of tile and capital of […]

REVIEW Behind the red front door, there’s a deli brimming with cured meats, cheese and tinned seafood. You’ll be perfectly content poised at the counter here, hefty mortadella sandwich in one hand, house-canned Martini in the other; however, it’s only one of your options. Climb the stairs and you’ll find the bistro, where Allie Webb […]

REVIEW What was once Café Nice is now owned by the group that owns Ananas, the brasserie that’s currently moving from The Rocks to Darling Harbour, so pineapple lamps have been added to the bright, bold Riviera-inspired décor and the menu isn’t so strictly Provençale. Bistro classics such as buttery escargots and mussels in white […]

REVIEW Over two decades, team Boathouse has built an enviable stable of suppliers to ensure that its sourcing of seafood is second to none. Nowhere is that more obvious than in sparkling plate of rock and Pacific oysters plucked from around the country, shucked to order, set on ice, paired with impeccable mignonette, lemon, rye […]

REVIEW At Woollahra’s favourite luxed-up French canteen, the classics never fall out of fashion. Twenty years and more than a few steak frites down the track, the Thonet bentwood chairs, Michael Fitzjames mural and linen-dressed tables are as magnetic as ever, and service remains a drawcard. The signature dishes, a little more Larousse than Passard,  […]

REVIEW Is it a bar? Is it a bird? A restaurant? An aeroplane? The lighting, the volume of the ’80s pop, the focus on booze and indeed the name say bar, but the quality of the cooking, the attentive and intelligent table service  and the presence of one Analiese Gregory in the kitchen place it […]

With the opening of Saint Peter, Sydney chef Josh Niland secures his place among the nation’s finest seafood cooks.

With No 1 Bent Street, Mike McEnearney brings his grown-up, produce-driven food to the heart of the city, writes Pat Nourse.

At Mercado, Nathan Sasi and his team like to do things the hard way, putting the focus on the craft of the chef, writes Pat Nourse, and the art of flavour.