The 23 best restaurants in Australia right now

Attica is not just a meal. It's an all-consuming sensory experience that has been a regular on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list for years. Given its worldwide reputation, scoring a table is no easy feat, and you’ll need to book far, far in advance. Those lucky enough to try chef and Netflix star Ben Shewry’s ambitiously Australian menus can expect artful dishes that hero hyper-local ingredients, including barbecued saltwater croc ribs, smoked emu with warrigal greens and finger lime, and wattleseed cake.

Sydney is home to – dare we say – the world’s most revolutionary seafood restaurant, helmed by the pioneer of ‘nose to tail’ cookery, Josh Niland. Perched at the restaurant’s beautiful marble-topped counter, you have front-row access to watch Saint Peter’s chefs transform a whole fish – guts, flesh and bones – into the most sustainable eight-course tasting menu. Think coal-kissed coral trout head, salt and vinegar mackerel, dry-aged swordfish, and even ice cream made from fish eyes. 

No gas. No electricity. Only fire. At Adelaide’s first open-flame restaurant, main character energy comes from a three-and-a-half-tonne wood-burning oven that sizzles everything from local figs and sourdough crumpets to black Angus strip steak, bone marrow and Southern Rock lobster. Michelin-trained chef Jake Kellie heads this sleek barbecue restaurant, which is housed inside a heritage-listed sandstone building. You can dine à la carte from Arkhé’s seasonally-driven menu, or try for a seat at the exclusive chef’s table, located in the heart of the restaurant. 

Named after a Japanese style of pottery, Raku blurs the lines between art and sustenance. The menu is extensive, showcasing seafood in all its glory. You can have it raw in the kingfish served with truffle yuzu, cold in a spanner crab sushi roll, or hot as king prawns doused in XO butter. Masters of the blades, the chefs expertly slice up fresh snapper, tuna belly and scallops into sashimi or nigiri; add crunch with popcorn shrimp on the tempura menu; and grill high-grade Wagyu on a robata charcoal grill. From the express lunch to the royal tasting degustation, Raku will leave you wishing you lived in Canberra (almost). 

What does it take to earn the crown of Sydney’s finest diner? Perhaps the dress-circle harbour views? Or the exquisite works of art on each and every plate? The custom-made crockery? The cornucopia of produce grown exclusively for the restaurant? The service team’s unrivalled professionalism? Some restaurants are engineered for special occasions and totally worth the splurge – Quay is most definitely one of them. 

Cut into the rolling hills of Tasmania’s countryside, this intimate restaurant is a tribute to all that’s good in Tasmania. Guests must enter through an enclosed foyer to reach the warm, sun-kissed dining room (seating only 16 guests), which offers exceptional views of Hell Fire Bluff and Maria Island beyond. Van Bone’s menu takes guests on a journey of up to 14 courses, showcasing Tasmania’s finest from the surrounding land and sea, along with produce harvested daily from their onsite orchards and evergreen market gardens. The all-Tasmanian drinks menu completes this exemplary, small-scale dining experience.

To question Gimlet’s beauty is like pondering out loud whether the sky is blue. One foot through the door into the almighty fine diner (in fact, Time Out Melbourne’s crowned winner of the Best Fine Dining award in 2023) and you’re swept into an era of astonishingly impressive 1920s glamour. The handsome, plush curved booths invite you to settle in and share a bottle of Champers with a friend, uniformed staff skate around the floor with ease, and warm light dances off the grand chandeliers overhead. You can, of course, go all out at Gimlet and dine on lobster, caviar service and exxy bottles of wine all night, but even just popping in for a few cocktails and a taste of a few dishes here and there is truly a lovely way to experience the restaurant, which tends to feel welcoming and adaptive no matter how much you’re willing to splurge.

It’s rare to find a restaurant in Australia where you’re asked to drink broth through branches and feast off sticks or rocks. Tucked in the 51-hectare Adelaide Botanic Gardens, this award-winning restaurant offers a sensory menu that changes with the seasons and daily weather patterns. You’ll need at least four hours to fully appreciate the degustation, which showcases more than 26 different flavours and highlights native Australian ingredients – like emu, green ants, desert lime and lemon myrtle – along with herbs and leaves foraged directly from the gardens. 

When it comes to once-in-a-lifetime meals, it’s hard to top Australia's first under-the-stars dining experience. Taking place in the middle of the Australian desert with spectacular views of Uluru (Ayers Rock) at sunset, guests will enjoy a beautiful three bush tucker-inspired buffet with premium Australian wines and beers. The evening becomes even more magical with a didgeridoo performance and a star talk that brings the twinkling night sky to life. 

Nostalgic flavours and playful desserts take flight at this small suburban diner in the Bush Capital. Pilot’s seven-course set menu is quintessentially Australian, and on any given day, you may be served IPA beer pretzels, Hawaiian pizza scrolls or brandy butterscotch Wagon Wheels. The experimental non-alcoholic drinks pairing is just as impressive as the boozed-up version, with a focus given to small, sustainable Aussie producers.

Such and Such is the cooler and colourful younger sibling of Canberra’s award-winning restaurant, Pilot. You could mistake the bright and bold dining room for an art gallery, where the walls pop with artworks, ceramics and sculptures by local artists. Each dish is a playful masterpiece too, with the super seasonal menu featuring contemporary takes on nostalgic snacks and share plates. Don’t take things too seriously and add on a glass (or three) of lo-fi, organic wines from both local makers and far away places.

Perched sky-high on the rooftop of the renowned Como The Treasury Hotel, Wildflower is proudly the highest-ranked restaurant in Perth. Every plate has a story to tell and revolves around the Indigenous ethos of six seasons. As the narrative unfolds over a four-, six- or eight-course degustation, you can take in sweeping views across the Swan River and city skyline. It’s worth playing with Wildflower’s cocktail list too, where native Australian ingredients steal the spotlight, including Davidson plum, strawberry gum, fingerlime and quandong. 

This 30-year-old beachside institution, affectionately known as the ‘salty jewel' of Bondi, has been championing seasonal produce long before it was cool. Award-winning chef Sean Moran’s creativity is showcased on the restaurant’s daily-changing three-course blackboard menu, which takes cue from the restaurant’s farm harvests in Bilpin – and is so closely tied to the seasons that it could quite literally change mid-service. Cross your fingers that Moran’s famous roast chook is on the menu, and don’t underestimate the nostalgic comforts of his seasonal jelly with ice cream for dessert.

If anyone ever complains about Canberra’s nightlife, just nod quietly and then laugh all the way up the stairs to Bar Rochford. This is undoubtedly the best little wine bar in the ACT and it’s hidden away in one of the capital’s oldest buildings. Once you’re up in the cosy confines of this first-floor bar you could be in Melbourne, Munich or Manhattan. Let their young gun team guide you on a vinous adventure that traverses the world, but if you don’t order food too, it’s a lost opportunity. The $90 set menu isn’t a cop-out; it’s more like a tour of their latest and greatest seasonal hits. 

Pushing the boundaries of what can be accomplished in a kitchen using exclusively the power of woodfire and smoke, Agnes brings precision to this unwieldy and demanding medium. Executive chef Ben Williamson and his talented team use different types of wood – ironbark, apple wood, cherry wood and olive wood – to uniquely interact with each of the dishes, whether it be Wagyu sirloin, pork tomahawk, Murray cod or potato flatbread. Agnes’s brilliance lies in merging food with architecture; those hanging lights transition from necessary beacons into spotlights over the table, forcing you to focus on every flavour, every technique, every crumb. You’ll want something to wash it all down with and fortunately, the team at Agnes has curated an impressive cellar of over 1,400 bottles from across Europe and Australia.

This is not your white-tablecloth kind of fine diner; it’s a casually charming Northern Rivers edition, run by award-winning chef and Noma alumnus Ben Devlin, and his wife Yen Trinh. The best seats in the house are at Pipit’s open kitchen counter, where wild foraged plants – most sourced from within 15 minutes drive of the restaurant – and sustainably caught seafood are smoked, charred or kissed on the woodfire grill. From the koji sourdough to the delicate linguine and tropical ice cream, everything is made in-house, with any offcuts fermented or converted into dressings, charcuterie, vinegar and even, kombucha. Pipit’s five-course tasting menu is seasonally curated, and with advance notice, they can cater for pretty much any dietary requirement.

 It takes a full day to dine at Brae. A meal at one of Victoria’s most highly decorated fine dining institutions fits a micro holiday into the hours needed to get out to the gently sloping paddocks of Birregurra (an easy two-hour drive from Melbourne), dine in rural splendour at an appropriately relaxed pace at Dan Hunter’s famous farmhouse restaurant, and return home. You could make it a genuine mini-break should your budget stretch that far, but it’s hard to think of a more pleasant day trip than one centred around the country’s pre-eminent dining experience. Now excuse us while we try to score a booking before everyone else does.

This ambitious wine bar and Mediterranean restaurant from the Swillhouse crew (Hubert, Alberto's Lounge, Shady Pines Saloon ) was penned as Sydney’s most anticipated opening of 2023. And Le Foote – with its charming wine bar, dining room complete with a striking custom mural, sublime dishes and wait staff wearing bow ties  – may be their best one yet. This is a place you’ll want to return to again and again. Our Food and Drink Editors sure as hell have. 

“Please wear something that makes you feel fabulous.” That’s dress code at this highly coveted ‘fun-dining’ restaurant in Hobart. The menu remains a mystery until you’re seated in Fico’s intimate 40-seat dining room, as it evolves depending on the day’s best produce. Throughout the nine-course tasting extravaganza, chef-owners Federica Andrisani and Oskar Rossi weave their magic, marrying local Tasmanian produce with sophisticated European techniques. A robust wine list ensures your dining experience is nothing short of extraordinary. 

34 seats, eight sittings, two spaces and one signature menu. In the foothills of Penfolds’ historic Magill Estate vineyard (est. 1844), this blowout restaurant matches stellar views of Adelaide city with seriously sophisticated food and hospitality. Chef Scott Huggins works with the finest South Australian produce in an innovative degustation menu that can be paired with predictably brilliant wines (go all out and order some Grange – you know you want to).

Multimillion-dollar views of Sydney Harbour demand nothing less than a degustation set to impress, and Aria delivers. For more than two decades, chef Matt Moran’s fine diner has gazed across the water toward the Opera House, hosting special occasions, milestone anniversaries and for the lucky few, a regular pitstop before a show. Aria’s unmistakably Australian tasting menu sways with the seasons, while the panoramic outlook from the floor-to-ceiling windows, remains some of the city’s best.

Time Out Melbourne's Restaurant of the Year in 2023 may be almost a decade old, but it still stands out as one of the most energising fine dining experiences in Melbourne. This farm-to-table restaurant’s kitchen sources all of its ingredients from a nearby 2.5 acre farm in Cardinia, owned and run by friends of the chefs. Each dish elevates humble produce to new heights, an alchemical feat that looks far outside the box in delivering an experience you'll remember. Up the ante and pair your four- or seven-course seasonal menu with regional wines from small producers near and far.

The saying goes that good things come in small packages, and Orange’s anchovy-tin-sized wine bar proves just that. Funky art and vintage posters dress the walls alongside vintage knick-knacks, jars of pickles, booze and a record spinning vinyl hits. You can’t not start with a glass of ‘Hey Rosé’ by Tristian Clark, which tastes like strawberries and picnics in the sunshine. Pair it with stellar snacks, including cheeses with local honeycomb, salumi and a solid selection of tinned seafood from Spain.