Sydney bar and pub reviews

March 2023 update: Beloved live music venue the Lansdowne Hotel reopened after closing for a hot minute, and then reopening again, after being saved by the legends from the Oxford Art Factory. Refreshed and revitalised, the new Lansdowne is still the same pub you’ve always loved, now just with a new retro-inspired rooftop, a New York deli-style menu from an award-winning chef and a late-night free music program. Sounds pretty good to us. Sporting rainbow umbrellas, blue AstroTurf and big wooden tables, the new rooftop is an inner-city oasis where you can soak up the sunset over chilled drinks before heading downstairs for a gig. Now to the food. New head chef, Eugene Novikov, formerly of the award-winning restaurant Amisfield in Queenstown and Qualia at Hamilton Island, has curated a New York-deli-style menu, which is available now. Get your hands on a classic Reuben with pastrami, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, pickles, mustard and Russian sauce on a rye sourdough; or 'The Meatball' with housemade meatballs, provolone, rocket and parmesan. Other plates include Chicago-style hot dogs, waffle fries, and fried chicken wings with Frank's hot sauce, all of which are perfect with an ice-cold beer before dancing with your mates. “The Lansdowne was an exciting opportunity to demonstrate how food, music and culture can all come together as the city comes back to life with activity,” says Novikov. And be sure to head there on a Friday night for the Lansdowne Hotel’s free live music program

After intermittent pandemic-led closures over the past few years, Kittyhawk is well and truly back, and celebrating its revival with revamped food, wine and cocktail menus. Jared Merlino of Lobo fame took over the corner of Bent and Phillip Streets in Sydney's financial district with this 1940s-themed French-American bar. It's a place with that olde-worlde luxury vibe that means you feel right at home in your tailored work wear.  Nowadays there's more focus on food. The head chef is from Paris, and hopes to revive both classic and more obscure French dishes by giving them a modern twist. The menu is fun, unpretentious and made for sharing. If you're after snacks, you can get oysters, cheeses, or shaved meats – along the lines of coppa and parma ham – served with pickles. For mains, there's a deliciously sticky slow-cooked beef brisket, or a lemon-crusted baked fish of the day, which both pair perfectly with the oak lettuce salad and frites. The design of the space is inspired by Liberation Day in Paris (August 25, 1944), and, more specifically, by the Rum and Rye Old Fashioneds, of which they have many, all of which infuse different varieties of each spirit, along with Angostura bitters, orange bitters, brown gomme syrup and a boxy ice cube. We let the bartenders choose our spirit mix and are presented with a cocktail that tastes of soft caramel with a whisper of orange. It’s boozy as hell but you’d hardly notice over the smooth, dried fruit flavours. There are also plenty of

It’s a whole lot of fun to pop through the faux-dressmaker’s shopfront and head down the stairs to Stitch Bar, where it feels like you’re drinking in the belly of a frigate. The dark timber, hanging lanterns and wooden barrels evoke a time of pirates and doubloons, but happily there’s a lot more than salted pork rations on the menu. Eats take their cues from the US, with hot wings, a Southern fried chicken burger, and tacos (from agave pork belly to octopus tacos). But the standout dish is the rib-eye, which is a beautiful, tender piece of meat that’s been pan-fried.  The team has even launched a late-night smorgasbord if you’re looking to soak up some sins or keep the party rolling. Think mac and cheese balls, hot wings, jalapeño poppers, slaw and all the fries. It’s designed for groups of six, priced at $36 per person, and available Sunday to Thursday from 9-11pm and Friday to Saturday 9pm-12.30am. The venue scores good grades on the drinks front too. The Cuba Calling #2 is a sharp, bright take on a Daiquiri, made with the citrusy punch of pineapple. Or for something that takes a little more consideration, order from their in-house barrel-aged spirits list.

There’s nothing about this old boozer that we don’t like and we are not alone in that sentiment. We suspect if anyone ever tried to refurbish the Courthouse Hotel there’d be rioting in the streets. This old pub is like a well-worn jumper – warm, comfortable, and big enough to fit anyone and everyone. And like any cherished piece of outerwear, it may be a little scuffed and faded, but that’s what happens when you love something with force. The beautiful thing about this old boozer is that it’s a pub designed to facilitate a good time on your terms. Want to sit up at the bar with a huge plate of fish and chips and watch back-to-back AFL games? This is the best place for it. Prefer to sink your tip money in pinball machines while you annihilate jugs of Stone and Wood Pacific Ale and Young Henrys Newtowner? Right this way. They’ve even got two separate outdoor areas so that smokers and diners can both enjoy the sunshine, and they let you bring your dog (on a lead) or kid (no lead required, probably). It’s the little details that count with a pub feed, like the perfectly layered nachos to ensure optimal crunch to cheese ratio, or foregoing a predictable chicken burger and making things interesting with a lamb, mint and yoghurt burger instead. Plus, there’s a whole lot more on the menu here for veggos than your average pumpkin salad – praise be for the edamame and eggplant salad. You know how the Courty got so awesome? Practice. They’ve been perfecting the art of the pub session fo

Suspend your reality for a moment. Imagine it's 1980s Australia and you're a True Blue Bruce. This is truly your time. On the cusp of its five-year birthday, Hawke's Brewing Company, the brewery co-founded by former prime minister Bob Hawke, has thrown open the doors of a flagship venue, housed inside its newly built 2,100 square-metre brewery in Marrickville. Dubbed the Bob Hawke Beer & Leisure Centre in honour of the company’s late namesake, the club is a cathedralesque space adorned with enormous brew tanks, museum-like pool rooms, and a nostalgic RLS-style Australian-Chinese bistro from one of Sydney's top chefs. The venue is delivering a full service bar, fronted by ten taps pouring Hawke’s core range beers, plus a rotation of new “One Hit Wonder” limited release styles. The addition of the venue’s Chinese-Australian bistro rounds out the Leisure Centre’s quintessential '80s-pub and community club experience. If your mind is immediately cast back to your childhood of sizzling black bean steak, honey prawns, san choy bao and deep-fried ice cream – in this case, an equally '80s-tastic Vienetta – you're spot on. Developed by chef Nic Wong (Cho Cho San, CicciaBella), the restaurant, the Lucky Prawn, is serving up RSL classics made for a 2022 palate. Everything is designed to be shared across a Lazy Susan, with tank-fresh beers to wash it all down. If you want the true '80s Australiana experience though, bust out the golden microphone, aka Crown Lager, available for a lofty $

For a Sydney bar to be considered as having a great view, it's usually mandatory to have the Harbour Bridge and Opera House in the line of sight. Or at the very least, an unobstructed glimpse of some water. But at Dean and Nancy on 22, its seemingly duff location, surrounded on all sides by CBD skyscrapers, is very much part of the appeal. Summoning the spirit of a 1960s New York cocktail lounge, you could very well mistake Sydney’s city blocks for those of Downtown Manhattan (if you don't look too closely). Sure, it may not be quite Madison Avenue, but George Street will still do. Created by the team behind multi-award-winning cocktail bar Maybe Sammy, this lofty lounge isn’t just resting on the laurels of its penthouse perch, 22 storeys up atop the A by Adina hotel tower. George Livissianis’ interiors are a glossy timewarp of tiger-striped carpets, dusky-veined black marble, leather upholstery and brushed brass accents that mirror both the amber sunsets that dance off every polished surface in the afternoon and the golden illuminations that light up the double-height ceilings after dark. It’s Vegas. It’s Mafia-chic. It’s the Rat Pack and Mad Men and Frank Sinatra crooning to Monroe and Kennedy. But (somewhat astonishingly) it’s not a cliche. This is largely thanks to the tongue-in-cheek charisma that underpins the vision for this bar, reminding you that, for all its luxe finery, it doesn't take itself too seriously. Far from being the sole haunt of the New York elites of ye

Bartending is in many ways the study of party alchemy – mixing drinks to lift you up, cool you out and caress your soul if it’s in need of a little TLC. A well-made Singapore Sling can send your tongue on an exotic getaway, even if the rest of you has to stay right here and pay the bills; a Daiquiri has the power to convince your hips you’ve got the rhythm in you; and an Old Pal can be your best friend after a long day in the salt mines. And there’s nowhere we prefer to pull up a stool and bend the elbow in the Inner West than at the long, sturdy, timber bar at Earl’s Juke Joint. Before your dreams of playlist domination get out of hand, we should tell you there are no jukeboxes here. But you don’t need one when owner Pasan Wijesena has programmed a specialty mix of ’90s hip hop, swampy rock and blues for your listening pleasure. The bar team here is one of the best. You’ve got veterans of the trade passing on their skills to a clutch of up-and-comers who’ve earned their stripes over long, hard shifts at one of Newtown’s favourite cocktail haunts. There is no rockstar shift – your drinks are in safe hands on a Tuesday or a Friday. This is a bar you want to be a regular at – they even have merch so you can declare your allegiance to the world – but be warned if you’re hungry that nuts are all they’ve got. Given you won’t want to relinquish that big table up the back, or the coveted window seat, cocktails can often become dinner here. We’re OK with it. Our livers maybe not so m

It’s not as if Potts Point wine bar Monopole needed a glow-up. The moodily lit perch for night owls from the deft hands of empire builders, chef Brent Savage and sommelier Nick Hildebrandt, had no shortage of fans. But by our metric, the new Monopole is the superior offering in many ways. We’ve all spent more than enough time inside, so the fact that the windows that run the length of the new room on Curtin Place can be folded back to create an airy terrace feel is nothing but good news for the day trade. They’re here for a business lunch that’s a cut above, but not an excessive fiscal leap for the accounts department to approve later – a rump cap with sauce bordelaise sauce maxes out the price point at a modest $49. That leaves a lot of fun and flavour hovering around the half-way mark, like a three-bite sweet white roll with chunks of tiger prawn playing the adjudicator in a tug of war between yuzu’s sharp citrus and mayo’s velvety embrace. Or maybe you fancy a trip to the Middle East with skewers of tender smoked pastrami, dried thyme and charred white onion. But as is often the case with talented chefs, the snack offerings are strong and far more creative than heftier mains. Take, for instance, a crisp brioche toast with piped comté custard, topped with pretty tendrils of chervil. At night, when the brief is more wine bar than bistro, the small eats dress up for a date with a glass of something extremely likeable, like the WA Savagnan from Heretic, which is also an extre

A slender, loud, dimly lit room perfect for a pre-dinner tipple, this Surry Hills wine bar andbottle shop has gently shapeshifted over the years, but the general concept has alwaysremained the same. Snacks to share and excellent wines. Always a winning combination.When Bodega closed in 2019, it wasn’t for long. In fact, they just kind of shifted sideways into WyNo (tucked just around the corner) and renamed the space – WyNo X Bodega – to reflect the merging of the two venues. So, if you have a booking at sister restaurants Porteño or Bastardo, or tickets to see a play at Belvoir Street Theatre, you can grab a glass of wine and the infamous ‘fish fingers’ – garlic rubbed toast soldiers topped with kingfish sashimi and cuttlefish ceviche to kick off your evening.Because of the shape of the space, the original layout from the 121BC days remains. If itain’t broke, don’t fix it, as they say. The long communal table is also the bar, seats up to 27,and fits any configuration of guests; although it feels a little squashy until our neighboursdepart for their dinner booking. The decor is a bit cluttered–although it turns out that theapparently random jumble of framed images are actually made up of the old Bodega mural(“barriga llena corazón contento” – full belly, happy heart) which is symbolic of the re-workingand legacy of the old tapas restaurant, and nice in theory but in practice feels kind ofoverwhelming in such a small space.To the left of the table is Sydney’s skinniest bottle

If you've found yourself delving into the world of natural wine at any point over the last decade or so in Sydney, you probably have one man to give thanks to. Co-founder of Rootstock and now fully fledged bricks-and-mortar businessman Giorgio De Maria has gone and opened a wine shop/bar/restaurant in a poky two-level space on the Darlinghurst end of Oxford Street.  With partners Enrico Tomelleri – hailing from little-known Sydney ventures like Ragazzi, Alberto's Lounge and 10 William Street – as well as Mattia Dicati of Vino Mito Wine Imports, it's safe to say you're going to be in very good hands when you walk through the door. Whether it be for a drink and a snack in the bar downstairs, or a more structured dinner service reserved for the second storey, everything at Paski is about quality: quality wine from quality winemakers and exceptional ingredients pulled together to pack real punch. Take, for instance, Tomelleri's pappalá: a crimson spread made of milk-soaked cod, bread and tomato, his version of a pappa al pomodoro combined with baccalà mantecato. Dusted with dehydrated tomato powder for sharp zing and deep, rounded savouriness, it's a strong start. The earthy tones continue with a beetroot sabayon with warm roasted hazelnuts, which we could take or leave, and a showstopper of whipped garlic-heavy sausage atop a crunchy crostini with bitter wilted cime di rapa, which is worth the price of admission alone.  Take a stroll along the wine shop wall, floor-to-ceiling ir