The back story
Sydney at the table: the harbour, the fire and the fish
Bennelong beneath the sails, Aria on the Quay, Oncore high over Barangaroo, Firedoor’s wood fire and Saint Peter’s fish: how Sydney eats, and where to book.
Photo Credit
Image courtesy of © JustARandomEditor123 · CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia CommonsSydney cooks with what is around it: the ocean, the farms of New South Wales and a century of migrant kitchens. The great rooms face the harbour, from Bennelong inside the Opera House to Aria on the eastern side of Circular Quay; the most talked-about kitchens are often in Surry Hills, Chippendale and the inner west, where Firedoor cooks only over fire and Saint Peter has made fish its whole subject. Australia has no MICHELIN Guide, and we quote no ratings: these are places we would send a friend.
By the harbour
Bennelong, run by the Fink group inside the Sydney Opera House, is in its own words a celebration of the building itself, with contemporary Australian cooking beneath the sails. Aria, Matt Moran’s restaurant at 1 Macquarie Street, looks across Circular Quay to the Bridge; its kitchen is led by Tom Gorringe. On level 26 of Crown Sydney at Barangaroo, Oncore by Clare Smyth releases its tables monthly, and only through Crown’s own website.
Fire and fish
At Firedoor in Surry Hills, Lennox Hastie cooks only with fire and smoke; Gildas, its Basque sister, is a few streets away. In Paddington, Saint Peter, at the Grand National Hotel, is Josh Niland’s fish restaurant, open for lunch from Thursday to Sunday. Ester, in a Chippendale warehouse, cooks in a wood-fired oven.
Neighbourhood tables
Sixpenny, founded in 2012 in a 1907 building in Stanmore, is a small tasting-menu room. Restaurant Hubert, below Bligh Street, is French and theatrical; Porteño in Surry Hills is Argentine and wood-fired; Continental Deli in Newtown is a deli by day and a bar and bistro by night.
Photo Credit
Image courtesy of © Dicklyon · CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia CommonsThe fish market
The new Sydney Fish Market opened on Blackwattle Bay on 19 January 2026, open daily from 7am to 10pm; go early for the auction-fresh catch and eat on the waterfront.
Book the harbour rooms weeks ahead, and ask for a table by the window.
Our advice: make the harbour your dinner and the neighbourhoods your lunch.
Why it's on our list
- By the harbour
- Fire and fish
- Neighbourhood tables
- The fish market
Location
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More in depth
The back storyAustralian FoodRock oysters and prawns from the fish market, barramundi, the meat pie, lamingtons, pavlova and a flat white: what to eat in Sydney.
The back storyWhere Sydney sleeps: the harbour, the city and the eastern suburbsThe Park Hyatt beside the Harbour Bridge, the Four Seasons above Circular Quay, Capella in the sandstone heart of the city, Crown Towers at Barangaroo, and the design hotels of Surry Hills and Chippendale: where to stay in Sydney.
The back storyThe harbour city: reading Sydney’s great sightsThe Opera House on Bennelong Point, the Bridge over the harbour, the convict barracks on Macquarie Street, the ferries to Manly and Taronga, and the beaches of the east: how to read Sydney.