These are our editors' favourite restaurants, cafes and takeaways in these Sydney beachside suburbs
The coastal strip that makes up Coogee, Clovelly and Maroubra is best known for its beaches, but there are a lot of excellent eats to enjoy in these Sydney suburbs, too.
Coogee has huge range – from fine diners to wine bars – while Clovelly and Maroubra are better known for their more relaxed cheap eats, takeaways and cafes.
Dive in to this guide for our editors' top picks.
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Louie is a beloved coastal-chic neighbourhood restaurant with Italian-style food, natural wines and banging tunes. The menu changes based on seasonal availability, but you'll find snacks and starters including things like zucchini flowers with pecorino, mint and honey, and scallops saltimbocca – then plenty of pasta options, and mains including eggplant parmigiana, pan-seared fish with smoked tomato, pippis, chickpeas and fresh herbs; or O’Connor black Angus sirloin or rib-eye. It's all yum.
Yana stands for ‘you are not alone’. It’s a fitting name for a restaurant designed to bring the community together. The concept was spearheaded by chef Sam Lane who wanted to recreate the feeling of sitting around a campfire, telling stories and tucking into delicious, honest food. This is pretty much what you can expect to find at Yana. The fire is there alright. It’s in the centre of the open kitchen, and you can smell the smoky notes when walking in. Nearly everything on the menu has been licked by an open flame – even the housemade focaccia.
At this slick, Mediterranean-leaning wine bar and restaurant you can keep it classic with cheese and charcuterie if you're down for simple snacking in the front bar, or go hard and follow some freshly shucked Sydney rock oysters with a bowl of Alaskan king crab pasta or MBS 5+ Wagyu scotch fillet with brandy Dianne sauce and crisp king browns. As the name suggests, they have a large wine list (400 labels that span Australian and European drops).
A whole 17 years after Britain’s most famous seafood chef took his business Down Under, Sydney finally has a Rick Stein restaurant. And it comes with something his two regional NSW restaurants no longer offer: Rick’s world-renowned fish and chips. Deep-fried in dripping. It's located on the ground floor of the InterContinental Sydney Coogee Beach, and the menu is almost exclusively seafood, plucked from the stalls of Sydney Fish Market every morning.
Osteria Coogee brings a piece of Italy to the 2034 postcode. It's the perfect seaside restaurant for aperitivo hour, a casual plate of pasta, date night or family catch-up. There's an R'n'B bottomless lunch offer every Saturday from 2pm – $99 a head (minimum four people) for olives, 18-hour-fermented foccacia, burrata with tomato and pickled mustard seeds, fried pizza, paccherri pasta with lamb ragu and salsa verde, gnocchi with porcini truffle cream, endive salad with Caesar yoghurt and garlic breadcrumbs (that gives you a sense of the type of food on offer) – plus bottomless Peroni, prosecco, wine or cocktails. (Though note that the menu changes seasonally.)
Sydney is blessed with many high-end, waterfront dining rooms, but Mimi’s is truly a thing of beauty. This fine-diner takes up the majority of the second floor in the Coogee Pavilion, with larged arched windows that look out onto Coogee Beach. Repurpose a wad of cash from your future travel fund and use it to treat yourself here instead. What's the menu like? As an example, the two-person set menu ($260 per head) gives you: a serve of their special bread with sour cream butter; blue fin tuna toro with confit tomato and a warm crumpet; a bougie potato scallop with caviar; bunuelos with manchego; seafood crudo or steak a l'Americaine; mud crab tagliolini; BBQ sommerlad chicken with sweet corn crepe plus desserts. If you can afford it, you're in for a good time.
Being by the beach is all well and good but once the sun goes down the surfboards, goggles and togs get put away and those sun-kissed bodies need a place to let off steam. That place is the Coogee Bay Hotel. There's no shortage of spaces throughout the hotel for a feed – choose your own adventure, whether that's in 'The Garden', the sprawling 'Beach Bar & Dining' space, the Art Deco-style Arden Lounge, or the Sports Bar.
Coffeeroom is a café at the south end of Coogee beach, which serves up delicious panini, local Tuga pastries and single-origin coffee. It has a warm, Scandinavian-style fit-out, with honeyed natural timber, polished concrete, exposed bricks and pops of soft colour.
'Best chicken burgers in Sydney' – it's a topic that gets people more fired up than the grill itself. Sydneysiders are passionate about their chook burgers, especially when it comes to the Portuguese style with chilli and mayo. Little L is one of those spots that is regularly mentioned among the top spots in Sydney – and we have to agree it's up there. Their Classic Chilli chicken burger ticks all the boxes: tender-grilled chicken, chilli sauce with just the right amount of spice, a generous spread of mayo, plus cheese and crisp lettuce on a fresh roll.
Think house-cured and spiced sustainable salmon from New Zealand, with juicy tomato, slivers of onion, bursts of salty capers and a generous slathering of herb schmear, encased in a chewy yet crisp-on-the-outside perfect bagel, baked fresh every morning. This is the classic bagel from Lox in a Box, a much-loved chain that serves traditional Polish bagels. They also have less trad flavours, including their Buffalo bagel with hot sauce, ranch dressing, salad and cheese; and their Katsu, with tonkatsu sauce, slaw, pickled cucumber and miso mayo. Stop on by the Coogee outlet with sandy feet and a big appetite.
A local favourite since 2008 (but originally located in Surry Hills) Sugarcane is a South East Asian restaurant with elegant takes on dishes from Thailand, Malaysia and more – plus vibrant cocktails and a 100-strong wine list. In fact, the great wine list is one of the things that helps this place stand out from similar styles of restaurant. Come for a spicy-good time.
This is a hole-in-the-wall bánh mì spot in Coogee, and Time Out's Rebecca Hegedus reckons that they serve up, without doubt, the best bánh mì in the area. "It’s been around for years and there’s almost always a line down the street, which says it all." They have other locations in Parramatta, Auburn and Smithfield.
This is a pretty little room on Arden Street, just up from the beach. They're open every day from 6am to 2pm, and they serve up cafe classics. They’re a nice team with a good vibe. What more could you want from a Coogee cafe?
At the time of writing, Johnny Gio's has 27 – yes, 27! – locations across Australia, and we reckon the fact that it's a franchise is the reason it's not critically acclaimed for serving up some of Sydney's best pizza. Despite that franchise fact, you can tell a lot of love goes into making each pizza that JG boxes up. It's a reliable spot for an affordable takeaway.
You should probably come to this Clovelly Road spot for the great fish and chips, but you should definitely come for the burgers, which are generous, fresh and flavour-packed, and brimming with Aussie nostalgia. This makes for the ideal post-beach fuel, but heads up, you’re likely to encounter a line. It’s well worth it.
Clovelly Road’s feel-good Cut Lunch Deli is always a good idea. The small, summery spot specialises in generously sized, freshly made sandwiches (also available on GF bread), as well as coffees and a handful of sweet treats. The schnitz is a local favourite: a whopping big sesame panko-crumbed chicken schnitzel with sweet zucchini mayo, pickled onions for zing and shredded ’berg for freshness – all on a soft bun. From Thursday to Sunday they also open at dinnertime – enjoy simple pleasures including foccacias, spaghetti, minimal-intervention wines and tinnies.
Bare feet and pineapple flambé are seldom, if ever, found in the same place. An ambitious pâtisserie seems better suited to Parisian laneways than the main drag of a beachy suburb. But step inside Madame and Yves, the Clovelly pâtisserie owned by classically trained French pâtissier Yves Scherrer, and you’ll find the best of both worlds, where post-swim pastries of all shapes and sizes come with a side of sea breeze.
Tuga has developed a cult following, largely thanks to its that its crisp-shelled pastel de nata (aka Portugese tarts). Piped with a sweet, liquid-like egg custard and fashioned out of buttery, layered pastry, the tarts are best eaten hot out of the oven. They also serve up other perfect pastry treats.
An all-in-one beef noodle soup: chewy ropes of fresh, handmade noodles shaken about in hot water until cooked then plunged into a deep bowl of clear, sweet beef broth. You’ll find this Indonesian dish at Mie Kocok Bandung in Maroubra, and it's such a signature dish here that they named their restaurant after it. The soup comes with your choice of fixings. If that's not your vibe, dive into a bowl of yamien pangsit goreng, a huddle of egg noodles with chicken mince, deep-fried wonton for crunch, and chicken soup on the side. Or the lo mie bandung, a saucier combo of egg noodles and chicken mince doused in a thick sweet gravy.
This Italian-inspired restaurant and bar sits across from the gorgeous stretch of sand that is Maroubra beach. The name comes from the merging of two cultures: Maroubra, representing the magnificent coastline and seaside living in Australia, and the Valtellina Valley in Northern Italy, with spectacular mountains and alpine cooking steeped in tradition and Italian warmth. It was opened by locals Georgette Unger and Patrick Agostinelli (originally from Valtellina). The duo wanted to create a relaxed yet elegant seaside venue that’s suited for special celebrations as much as it is for a post-surf Spritz and pizza.
This large Japanese restaurant is popular with locals – from young people to families – because it has an extensive menu and serves really high-quality fare. It also goes beyond the classics, offering some fun snacks, like these pork miso bites (pictured). You can order from the iPad at your table, so you can get a couple of things then order more as you go.
This place is always packed, for two reasons: their totally stacked big breakfasts, and their incredible brownies. They have brownies for purchase (including this pistachio-cream brownie – pictured – which actually took us a few days to get through!), but they also have a huge punch bowl full of little brownie squares at their counter, and they'll give you a chunk with any drink purchase. Speaking of their drinks, they are great, also – we particularly love the iced strawberry matcha latte.
Originally based in Darlinghurst and now spread throughout Sydney, The Grumpy Baker is a must-try for lovers of good bread and pastries. The Maroubra branch is perched on the hill above the north end of Maroubra Beach, with sweeping ocean views. This is reliable spot for breakfast, lunch, coffee and something sweet from the cabinet. We dare you to feel grumpy after fuelling up here.
You can't get any closer to eating and drinking at the beach than at this place, which sits on the boulevard above the sand. They serve breakfasts, lunches and cocktails, wines and beers with front-row views of the ocean.
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