Maggie Scardifield

Autumn 2024 update: Hey autumn, so glad you’re here, with your still-pleasant weather, fresh air and gorgeous leaves. Sydney’s dining scene is as red-hot as ever, and this guide is the place to start. Here's our list of Time Out's best restaurants in Sydney right now, from hot newcomers to time-honoured institutions, curated by our expert local editors and critics who have tasted their way through Sydney, including Time Out's Food & Drink Editor Avril Treasure.  How did we narrow it down to the very best? When deciding, we considered fun, flavour, creativity, value for money – and 'wow' factor. So yes, of course, you’ll find a fine diner inside the Sydney Opera House here, but you’ll also find neighbourhood pasta, hole-in-the-wall Thai and venues right by the sea. Our picks right now are seafood haven Saint Peter, NY-style steakhouse Clam Bar, timeless vegan diner Yellow, and gorgeous trattoria Palazzo Salato. (Be sure to check out our guide to Sydney's best new restaurants, too.) Happy dining, Sydney. RECOMMENDED READS: After a drink? Check out our favourite bars in Sydney. Or: Our list of the best cheap eats.

From Quay’s Snow Egg and Golden Century’s pipis in XO sauce, to Black Star’s strawberry and watermelon cake, Sydney loves to love a cult dish. But what will we be eating again and again in 2019? Toasties, sandwiches and jaffles are making a compelling case for this year’s Most Valuable Player. Likewise, riffs on classic Italian. We go in search of the city’s next round of hall-of-famers. Checked off every item? Work your way through the 50 best bars and the 50 best things to do in Sydney.  RECOMMENDED: The 50 best restaurants in Sydney.

Chef Mat Lindsay wakes up every morning to bake cookies. He doesn’t own a bakery, and the cookies won’t be found on the menu at his restaurant, Ester, in Chippendale, or his Surry Hills wine bar, Poly. They’re for his kebab shop, Shwarmama. The glossy concrete, marble and steel-clad hole-in-the-wall is tucked away on leafy Commonwealth Street in Surry Hills. Lindsay has joined forces with Russell Beard of nearby Paramount House Hotel, Paramount Coffee Project and Reuben Hills fame for the project, and together they make a winning team. The food is fast and fresh, the site considered, the vibe buzzing, and the branding? Pure fire.  Manning the till at the all-day eatery are young staff decked out in Shwarmama merch (think fire-engine red neckerchiefs and backwards hats).  “What’s good?” we ask.  “Literally everything,” says our server. And it’s not a lie.  Go with a gang, and start with the hummus. A well of the silky dip, whipped like cream with tahini, holds juicy whole chickpeas, harissa and citrusy parsley oil. The shawarma is chicken, heavily spiced, and shaved to order from a gas-powered vertical spit. Choose to have it loaded into that crisp-edged laffa, or over chips in the Not Halal Snack Pack. In both guises the juicy meat plays support-act to garlic sauce, harissa, tahini, hummus, onions and hot-pink crunchy pickles, but it’s in the NHSP that you can taste the spices at their best. The chips, too, skin-on and fried extra crisp, somehow hold their crunch under a hot

A booze-friendly, panko-crumbed fried anchovy and mozzarella sanga. Devilled eggs given popcorn-like punch with spiced butter and trout roe. Fiery ’nduja swiped across rye crackers, the heat interrupted by thin rounds of dill-pickled carrot. These are just some of the hits of Café Paci 2.0. And the great news? We’re only at the snacks.  After a three-plus-year wait, Finnish chef Pasi Petänen has swung open the doors to his permanent reboot on King Street in Newtown. With him, he’s brought plenty of imagination and technique, along with stellar booze and an unstoppable team.  The original Café Paci opened in Darlinghurst in 2013. The building was slated to be knocked down, so Petänen was there for a good time, not a long time. Circa 2019, the fine-dining(ish) set menu is gone, and in its place is a wine-bar-ish à la carte offering.  Petänen’s cooking leans a little more Finnish-Italo-Australian than his Mexican-Finnish-Viet riffs of the past, perhaps due in part to his time spent touring That’s Amore pop-ups with Italian wine importer, Rootstock co-founder and sommelier, Giorgio De Maria. The ginger-bearded somm is behind Paci’s cracking new wine list that’s as much fun to read as it is to drink from. If you’re lucky, you’ll find him working the floor, too.  Regardless of how many UDLs you drank in high school, a tinnie of Hartwall Original lonkero is a fun place to start. The ready-to-drink gin and grapefruit soda is often found on tap in Finnish saunas, and it’s “just bad en