Where to get the best long lunch in Sydney

Sydney is home to many incredible dining rooms, and Olympus Dining is up there at the top. The 220-seat Greek restaurant features an open, retractable roof, allowing sunlight to pour in, and in the centre, a 50-year-old bougainvillea channels holiday vibes. Here, it’s all about enjoying a long Greek feast with your people, fuelled by taramasalata and ouzo. It’s one of my favourite places to celebrate.

Pro tip: The set menu is great value at $77 – if you’re with a group of friends, choose that.

Views – and long lunches lunch – don't get much better than at Catalina. Perched on the water in Rose Bay – and offering ’gram-worthy panoramic vistas of the harbour – Catalina has been welcoming Sydneysiders for more than 30 years, serving up relaxed elegance with a side of coastal air. The fine diner was opened in 1994 by Judy McMahon and her late husband, Michael McMahon, and more than three decades later, it’s still a family-run-and-owned affair, with their children, Kate and James, now managing the restaurant. Sitting there on a sunny day with a crisp white in hand, listening to the hubbub of diners and the clicking of glassware, your meal not far away, and gazing out to the sea feels almost as good as a holiday.

This little beachfront restaurant looks like a coastal café but has the heart of a fine diner, and for more than 30 years it has been setting the standard for thoughtful modern Australian cooking. Owner chef Sean Moran was all about local produce long before it was cool, and with views out over Bondi Beach it's the best place to spend a chunk of your weekend on memorable food and great wine.

Pro tip: For exciting updates to Sean's rotating three-course menu ($140 per person), be sure to follow Moran's Instagram.

A warehouse tucked in the back streets of Marrickville may not sound like the first option for a dreamy long lunch, but trust us, Baba’s Place is the spot. The kitschy-cool space serves up an ode to suburban cuisine, and it’s original, joyous and delicious. Service is also bang on – the team strikes the right balance of friendly and knowledgeable, while leaving you to catch up with your people.

Pro tip: You’re in Marrickville – the home of excellent breweries. After lunch, stroll to nearby Grifter, Batch Brewing Co. and Mixtape – and make a day of it.

It can be easy to overlook the old guard in favour of the new, but we can't think of many better ways to spend an afternoon than gazing at Freshwater Beach, pretending you're in Sardinia and eating Giovanni Pilu's delectable Italian food.

Pro tip: Freshwater is a short Uber from Manly, which means you can add a ferry trip to double down on waterfront views. 

While a meal at any time of the day at top chef Phil Wood’s upscale Paddington restaurant Ursula's will surely be memorable, during the day is when the venue truly shines its brightest. From the plush, caramel-coloured carpet to the Maison Balzac glassware and splashes of cobalt blue, the dining room is an interior lover’s dream. Food lovers will be chuffed with Wood’s seriously delicious cooking, too.

Pro-tip: The Moreton Bay bug pasta with a luscious crustacean butter continues to live rent free in our mind, years on. Order that.

In terms of lunch real estate, it doesn't get much better than Manly Pavilion. The gorgeous, heritage-listed building is literally perched over the water in Manly, so you can soak up panoramic ocean views. Throw in a crowd-pleasing menu and cool drinks and that sounds like a pretty great day to us.

Pro-tip: Shimmy on down for happy hour 4-6pm weekdays, and if you're after a bottomless brunch they do fab two-hour sittings across Fri, Sat and Sun.

Mimi's is something of a chip off the old block (Merivale's Bert's did fancy coastal bistro first), but it's also its own fancy beast. With a prime position right on Coogee Beach, it's worth making it a day trip for the beautiful views out those huge, arched windows. Dress for the occasion and treat yourself – if there was ever a time to order bumps of caviar and vodka, it's now.

Pro tip: Merivale pretty much specialise in long lunch venues, so take your pick from Bert's, Totti's, or Fred's.

Chef Neil Perry's swansong restaurant is one of his most personal ventures. The menu is pure Perry: Mediterranean and Asian flavours refracted through a contemporary Australian lens, bolstered by namechecked produce that’s some of the finest in the land.

Pro tip: Scan the cocktail list, and you’ll discover the perfect Martini was “quintessential” to Margaret, Perry’s late mother, after whom the restaurant is named. Seems only fitting, then, to start with one.

From the nautical, elegant-yet-relaxed dining room to the well-paced produce-driven set menu and the old-school polished service, Bathers' Pavilion was made for long lunches. This is the kind of place where four hours can pass you by blissfully and seamlessly like a surfer riding a wave. Except instead of ocean droplets, you’ll be knocking back a crisp white.

Pro-tip: Stretch your legs after lunch with a stroll along the pretty Balmoral Promenade. Also, parking is notoriously expensive in this pretty neck of the woods. Leave the car at home and catch an Uber.

Reviews of LuMi often allude to a quote – “You are confined only by the walls you create” – that’s etched onto the sliding glass doors that surround the handsomely appointed dining room. On a warm summer night you’ll find those doors flung open, and the irony isn’t lost. It's a fitting metaphor for a technically faultless dining experience with no constraints, one of the city’s very best, where the only rule seems to be that there aren’t any.

Pro tip: If you're the type to go big or go home, book in for the ever-revolving, always thrilling omakase menu.

Let’s face it, drinking Spritzes among ocean views and Sydney’s most beautiful people at neighbouring tables will never go out of style. Even if the water is so cold you can hardly feel your face, we still like to be near it, which is what makes Icebergs such a great time. 

Pro tip: Do the turn by heading through to the bar afterwards for cheeky drinks and maybe even a fashionable (chair) boogie.

The Dolphin Hotel isn't your standard Sydney pub. Walls wrinkle with off-white fabric, tables and chairs pop with black-on-white faux graffiti, daily specials are taped to arbitrary vertical surfaces. The place is positively sprawling, opening into a collection of distinct dining rooms and bar areas, including its own pumping pizzeria. While the pies here are some of Sydney's best, there's plenty more to love here – simple share plates that quietly steal the show, silky risotto and pasta, a wicked cocktail list, and the list goes on.

Pro tip: When the dough's this good, a simple marinara or Margherita suffices. 

Josh Niland's revolutionary seafood restaurant has found a beautiful new home in Paddington’s Grand National Hotel, but the game-changing dishes remain. Here, it’s not a simple matter of ‘what do you want to eat?’, but rather, ‘what can you not afford to miss?’. Take it from us, Saint Peter has transformed the expectations of seafood dining in Sydney, if not the world.

Pro tip: Go hard on the starters – the seafood charcuterie is unlike anything else you can eat in Sydney.

The Northern Beaches is a top pick for a long and lazy lunch by the sea and the Newport is an outstanding choice for families and friends alike. With great pub grub, stunning views and flowing drinks, why not settle in and really make a day of it?

Pro tip: There's a fun kids area to keep the little ones entertained while you grab that extra glass of bubbles.

Stunning Parisian brasserie Armorica is a long lunch dream. The restaurant is open from noon all week long, and the daytime vibes are always perfection. With an excellent ten-course set menu on offer, the only question worth asking is: what the hell are you waiting for?

Pro tip: In the warmer months, you can get a $99 magnum of Dominique Portet Fontaine rosé to enjoy with your lunch.

Imagine if you were going to spend the rest of your life at one bar and restaurant. You’d need it to be the complete package.  We’re talking incredible drinks, great service and enough cheese to kill a man. An ace steak wouldn’t hurt and if they could also have an impressive canned goods store that would last you through an apocalypse, that’d be the cherry on top. At Continental you’re looking at your future life partner, in venue form.

Pro tip: One of Continental's most popular signatures is its canned cocktails. Order one for the puns (will it be a Mar-tinny to start?) and several more for the flavour.

This glitzy Woolloomooloo spot is known for being a wharfside runway for stars and the go-to for long lunches. With its postcard-worthy location and packed tables, Otto isn’t short on buzz. For an Italian restaurant to be making one of the best vegan menus in town, they're not short on talent either.

Pro-tip: In tandem with a specialty vegan menu Otto offers the most flavourful vegetarian menu, too.

Overlooking Chiswick's lush gardens with a glass of rosé in one hand and a spoonful of delectable food in the other is what we like to call Sydney-heaven. Plus there are loads of big tables if there's a big group involved, and it's the perfect window to order the famous Moran family slow-roasted lamb.

Pro-tip: If you've got a group of four or more opt for the set menu, which includes plenty of tasty bits from the garden.

Found in Sydney’s CBD, the historic clocktower building is home to four gorgeous venues. While each venue has its own personality and identity – red-hued Art Deco style Clocktower Bar, we’re looking at you – the jewel in the house is no doubt the Dining Room & Terrace, found on the ninth floor. Designed by Anna Hewett, the sun-lit room features a large open kitchen, cream lamps and beige curved seating – though the space is anything but beige. Outside, a wrap-around terrace dotted with fruit trees and cityscape views has long, boozy lunches written all over it.

Pro-tip: After lunch, be sure to head up to the showstopping Sky Bar for one last drink.

Roasted ducks, whole mud crabs and rock lobsters might hog the limelight at Mr Wong, but smart players know to make it a lunchtime occasion. It's only during the daylight hours that they have their dim sum menu available, and it's some of the finest dumpling work in town.

Pro tip: You can still get the big ticket proteins at lunch time so it's a win all round.

We might be a city of forever shifting dining whims, but our love of scampi, split and grilled in their shells, next to a tangle of spaghetti wearing vermillion tomato sugo and chopped parsley like edible couture never falters. That’s why it’s always a roll of the dice for how hard it’s going to be to get a table at Fratelli Paradiso for lunch on a weekend. This simple dining room with a giant chalkboard on one wall stands staunch in its consistency in the face of a dining scene fixated on the hot new trend.

Pro tip: The wines by the glass are a great time, but by the bottle the range opens out to something a whole lot more fun and diverse.

Bennelong offers you everything to love about the city bundled up into one extravagent dining experience. Yes, the fine dining scene in Sydney has quite the reputation for serving teeny-tiny portions that leave you in desperate need of a maccas run on the way home. But with dishes like Bennelong's much-loved sashimi scallops served with oyster cream, pickled white turnips and black vinegar laver, an overwhelming kick of flavour and depth will leave any thoughts of hunger totally KO'd. 

Pro tip: A walk around the Botanic Gardens is a beautiful way to finish your love affair with the city.