The best steak restaurants in Sydney right now

At the Gidley, the second steak restaurant from the Liquor and Larder group who also own Bistecca, a friendly host takes your jacket, zips your phone away in an expensive leather pouch, and walks you past the galley bar into a velvet-lined booth, complete with curtains. Here, the rib eye is king. You can get it on the bone, as a boneless rib eye cap or as a standing prime rib roast. You'll also find the rarely served but impossibly juicy spinalis cut – a part of the cow often overlooked for its fattiness, but when prepared and seared just right, is an absolute showstopper. 

At Rockpool, they dry-age their steaks to achieve the perfect caramelised popcorn flavour. There's not too much seasoning – just some salt on the crust. But like any good steakhouse, there’s mustard or a house-made barbecue sauce if you play fast and loose with the rules. Yes, the prices are reflective of Rockpool's location and clientele, but you don’t have to get the $195 sirloin – the $72 fillet with Café de Paris butter is a showstopper, and for a nudge more the $95 rib eye on the bone has enough meat to share. Not that you'll want to. 

Alfie’s second promise is steak to your table within 15 minutes after ordering. And because this is the Bistecca team we're talking about, any old steak it ain't, but a 220g Riverine sirloin, dry-aged at the on-site butchery found at the back right of the room. And true to their word, 15 minutes later our steak arrives, blackened on the outside thanks to being sizzled on Alfie’s custom-made grill. It’s cooked to perfection, blushing pink, with a glorious amount of fat, char and seasoning. Paired with a green sauce, heady with confit garlic, Dijon mustard and horseradish, it’s a cut above most steaks in town.

This basement restaurant devoted to Florence’s famous T-bone steaks asks you to lock your phone in a little drawer when you arrive. All the better to focus on your meat, we imagine. You elect how much steak you’re here for – at $18 per 100g – and they deliver it for inspection. It comes unseasoned, with only a little olive wood and ironbark smoke to augment the clean, light beefiness of the sirloin and fillet sliced off the bone.

When Porteño first opened in 2010, it shook the Sydney dining scene to its core. It remixed dinner to a frenetic rockabilly beat, fuelled it with fire and sparked a Latin-American boom. The Wagyu skirt here is luxuriously juicy, with that deep, savoury flavour that comes from grass-fed cattle raised up in north Queensland. The tender slices are laid out on crimson tracks of sweet roasted capsicum dressed in a generous lug of olive oil. The bartender mentions that he only eats red meat twice a year and it’s this steak – let that be your guide. 

Firedoor is a place that appeals to the primal. Watch glowing coals go from furnace to grill and chefs cook by touch, not timer. Head chef Lennox Hastie has basically won all the accolades there are to win, because he sure knows how to prep and grill a steak. At the electricity and gas-free, fire-powered Firedoor, Hastie specialises in a 150-day dry-aged beef rib on the bone. Just a heads up though, it can be tricky to get in: reservations open up three months in advance on the first Wednesday of the month, so pop a reminder in every calendar. It's worth it. 

Morrison Bar & Oyster Room has had a glow up, transforming into Morrison’s Oyster Bar & Grill. Prime cuts of beef – hand-selected and sourced from Aussie farmers including Jack’s Creek, The Australian Agricultural Company and Rangers Valley – is the go here. The meat is aged in-house from 6-12 weeks, tenderising the protein and allowing it to develop a deeper and more delicious flavour. Choose from a grain-fed rib eye with Diane sauce and rich and creamy Paris mash potato; pasture-fed beef tenderloin with cracked black pepper and chestnut puree; and black Angus sirloin with café de Paris butter and fries.

The joy of a steakhouse lies in its simplicity. At Matt Moran's Chophouse, curveballs are not welcome on a single-page menu with laser focus that skips from appetisers to steak and sides with nary a detour. You can order your own fully-contained cut from a selection of four from the grill – no sharing obligations attached. But to get your hands on the Moran family beef from their farm in Oberon, you need to level up to the ‘on the bone’ menu, where meat is priced by the 100g and minimum weights are enforced. 

Honestly, if you order anything on the menu at Ester you'll be dining happy. However, if you want to enter carnivore Nirvana, don't go past the dry-aged jersey cow striploin. Few things go together as beautifully as wood-fire and red meat, and while it might set you back a hefty $125, it's well worth it for every charred, tender, and rich bite.

Just walking into Woodcut – the Crown’s ground floor restaurant – is an experience in itself. Firstly, the sprawling dining room is enormous (it seats 300 both inside and al fresco) and, with golds and browns and blacks, statement moody lighting and leather seats, it’s absolutely glamorous. Secondly, the smell of charcoal, fire and smoke meets you as quickly as you’re greeted by the smiling maître d' at the front door. It’s inviting and nostalgic all at once, taking us back to our childhood of weekends spent around a campfire. Except it’s not marshmallows being toasted, but premium cuts of meats and vegetables on the finest charcoal grills across four different kitchens. Each of the kitchens has its own focus – fire, smoke, ice and steam – and the chefs communicate with each other using headsets. Serious business, and the results are delicious, in particular the steak cooked on the wood grill. As good as it gets.

Though it takes its inspiration from Little Italy and the state-side steakhouse scene, Gowings 2.0 is a thoroughly new era, an utterly fresh reimagining under the direction of acclaimed British chef and genuinely good geezer, Sean Connolly (the Morrison Bar and Oyster Room). Steaks are just one of the highlights at this all-killer-no-filler diner, though they are truly exceptional steaks. Grass-fed, aged, and grilled to perfection, this is one to add to your list.

If you’re keen to dig into one of Australia’s best steaks with a side of a million dollar view then Kingsleys Woolloomooloo is your spot. Head chef Leonardo Rachid Militão, alongside Australian Venue Co’s (BrewDog South Eveleigh, the Winery) executive chef Jason Roberson, have curated a first-class steak menu showcasing mostly grain-fed, grain-finished or pasture-raised beef from some of Australia’s leading farms like Riverine, Westholme, 2GR and O’Connor. All the cuts are cooked on a charcoal grill and come with onion jam, snow pea leaves, smoked salt, and a bunch of mustards. Plus, you can choose your sauce from bernaise, chimichurri, red wine jus, green peppercorns, confit garlic butter and fermented chilli. Read: condiment heaven. Don’t even get us started on the sides.

‘Big’ Sam Young and his partner Grace take steak seriously at their relaxed and indulgent Castlecrag bistro, S’more. The chefs and owners are passionate about sourcing the absolute best in the biz and the results are pretty juicy. Young gets all his steak from NSW – including the grass-fed beef from the award-winning Jack's Creek in Tamworth, as well as 2GR Wagyu, which is as luxe as they come. Young reckons the Wagyu has the perfect balance between fat and beef flavour, and we agree. All of the steaks are expertly cooked on the hibachi grill, and we recommend pairing it with a clay pot fried rice with lap cheong and shitake mushrooms, and sweet corn lathered with a soy honey. More is more at S’more, and we’re here for the ride. Wear loose pants.

Long gone are the days of school excursions and overpriced, mediocre wedges when dining at Sydney Tower. The jewel in the crown of the refurbished sky-high complex is Infinity. The steaks here are outstanding, in particular, the grass fed scotch fillet. Tender, flavourful, and served alongside house mustard, smoked salt and green horseradish crème fraîche, every bite is an adventure into deliciousness.

The Sanderson is a handsome CBD restaurant by the Speakeasy Group (also Eau de Vie, Nick and Nora’s and Mjølner) where excellent steak and sublime seafood comes served with a side of fun. When it comes to proteins, the team does not muck around. In fact, there’s a whole section of the menu dedicated to ‘Land’. They also dry-age their meat in-house (which you’ll see as soon as you walk in). There’s a good range of price points too – from around the $50 mark for an Angus Creek flation, to the $160 mark for a whopping 700g grass-fed sirloin on the bone. Hot tip: order the miso and roasted garlic butter to pair with your steak – you won’t regret it.

The Fairmont, a classic bistro above the Occidental Pub in Wynyard, is fairly uncompromising in its offering: you’re having steak. End of. Only fifteen bucks separates the cheapest minute steak for $40 and the 350g, grass-fed Angus scotch fillet. It’s all carefully managed to walk that mid-range line – but you still can expect great quality, aged and tender cuts of beef. When you're craving a well-cooked steak on a big white plate, a good pepper sauce, an even better jus, and a pleasing selection of mustards, head to the Fairmont Hotel.

At Black, the chefs smoke your precious serve for ten minutes over cherry wood before grilling it over ironbark coals. It’s seasoned with Murray River pink salt and glazed with rendered fat that they trim from the meat. The result is four utterly perfect, rosy-hued slices. They come caramelised and salty on the outside and so juicy in the middle that you get a dopamine hit every time you bite down. The flavour is as pure and clean as the NSW pasture the cattle are raised on, and it’ll make you close your eyes, lean back, and groan quietly while pleasure firecrackers explode in your brain.

Sydney's steak scene went up a notch in 2022 with the opening of Botswana Butchery, the crowning jewel of Martin Place's insane $170 million hospo hub at the foot of the Siedler-designed MLC tower. The steak selections range from pasture-raised Wagyu to Angus sirloin, dry-aged rib eye and a mammoth Jack's Creek Wagyu tomahawk, big enough to cover a table for a cool $390. But why stop there? This lot are taking their condiments very, very seriously too. Whether you opt for a bone marrow and truffle butter, the trio of house-made mustards, or a thyme and pinot jus, every bite of your steak will be a game changer. 

If you're after something familiar done so, so well, we suggest a steak feed at Sydney restaurant Bopp and Tone. There are four to choose from: An Angus tenderloin; Wagyu sirloin; Angus flank; and an 800g bone-in rib eye from Riverine in NSW. As for sides, we’d go for the roast cracked potatoes with herb butter; and asparagus with pistachio, mint, and lemon.