7 hottest Sydney restaurants that are impossible to get into
No amount of name dropping and ‘don’t you know who I am’s’ can see you skip the queue and snag a table at these popular restaurants — especially on a Saturday night.
Confidential
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Name-dropping, pleading, sob-stories, forgery? These won’t help you get a table at Sydney’s most popular venues on a Saturday night at the moment.
The key – and the sad truth – is patience; joining an online queue and hoping that Rest, or the reservation gods, alert you to a late cancel. Or, join every restaurant reviewer’s technique of eating at ridiculous hours, and days.
The more determined diners are comfortable making reservations up to six months in advance, and it’s not uncommon for a surprise notification that you have dinner at Hubert, Bennelong or Firedoor tomorrow night, and you can thank last season’s you for getting you in.
The hottest restaurants right now are not only the best restaurants. There are many tables through the week that rank high in the upcoming delicious. 100, out on July 30.
Firedoor
Mention Firedoor to any avid diner and they will roll their eyes. Delicious, amazing, sure. But almost impossible to get in to. We have the Netflix series Chef’s Table to thank for the global know-how on this spectacular restaurant, which features chef Lennox Hastie in its BBQ episode.
If you have seen the series, then you know the bar is the only place to sit at Firedoor. From this vantage, diners can watch Hastie work, feel the warmth from the fire-only kitchen, even chat to the chef.
Reservations for Firedoor released three months in advance, on the first Wednesday of each month at 12pm. Try for a midweek booking or try a table for a larger group and find some friends you like enough closer to the date.
Saint Peter
Chef Josh Niland, co-owner and creator of the Charcoal Fish, Saint Peter, Fish Butchery collection, has become a bit of a global poster boy for fish. He dry-ages fish the way chefs do with beef, he cooks fish on the bone to increase flavour, and he takes the whole-beast, no-waste philosophy to the underwater world.
Niland has one of the most immaculate feeds and highly engaged social media following of any chef out there, and he’s inspiring anyone who loves quality food, inventive cooking and a downright fun experience to book in stat to his beautiful restaurant.
The online queue for any night of the week was already length but has been exacerbated by the fact Niland will move the restaurant to a new premise so fans want their last taste of the iconic location.
If you can’t get in, try a few shops down Paddington’s Oxford Street for some of the fish and chips at his Fish Butchery.
Restaurant Hubert
Wait a few months for a Saturday night reservation at Restaurant Hubert, the CBD French restaurant that does good times, extraordinary food, and an old-world elegance that Sydney cannot get enough of right now.
Since it opened Restaurant Hubert has attracted the queues and also is a favourite of those in the hospitality business. It used to take walk-ins, so the literal queues went around the block, and now it’s more a digital situation. It’s a big place, and yet it fills every night.
There are three bars, a large central dining room, a pair of intimate private dining rooms and the Theatre Royale, as well as an art-house cinema that hosts special movie nights.
Come here for oysters shucked to order, escargots with XO sauce and frame duck parfait in a shimmering maple-syrup jelly.
Totti’s Bondi
There’s a pizza oven that does wood-fired bread and whole wood-roasted fish, great value pasta spanning cacio e pepe and gnocchetti sardi with mussels and vongole, and a long list of antipasti that could have us grazing all day.
It’s no wonder Bondi cannot get enough of this delicious, fun-night-out Italian from the Merivale group. To avoid disappointing the frustrated masses who can’t get in anywhere anymore, Totti’s has opened up bookings for up to 12 weeks in the future, so it’s time to lock in that long lunch now.
Bondi is ever popular and an easy spot for Eastern Sydney locals, but the rest of us can get in a little easier in the newer Rozelle post, where the wood-fired bread is just as impeccable, the fit out just as on-point, and the surrounding parking slightly less impossible.
Quay
Chef Peter Gilmore changed our perception of what dessert can be when he introduced his Snow Egg to the world on MasterChef Australia.
What was one of Sydney’s best restaurants for harbourside special occasions became the hardest in the city to get into, with waitlists for months, especially on a weekend.
All those foodies hoping for a perfect place to propose had to find another location, or postpone their marital plans by six months.
This is inventive, extraordinary food. Think: smoked eel cream, sea cucumber cracking and Oscietra caviar with blossoms. There’s nothing ordinary about this place, and it’s worth the wait, better still if you can find a night when a ship isn’t pulled up outside and blocking some of the view. At times like this though, even cashed-up diners can’t be choosers.
LuMi
Looking for a romantic restaurant with water views? Turns out everyone has had the same idea. Housed in a glowing glass cube on Pyrmont Bay, the beautifully illuminated LuMi attracts loved-up couples like moths to a flame.
We blame the dining room, which has been strung up with twinkling lights to create the ultimate fairytale setting. It could also be the extremely refined 8-course degustation menu by high-flying former Noma chef, Federico Zanellato.
Despite having opened eight years ago, demand for this hotspot has still not worn off. Expect at least a 30 day wait until you can get in the door. If you‘re one of those people who leave their anniversary until the last minute, this one is definitely not for you.
Kobo
With just 8 seats a night, it’s no wonder that no one can get a booking at Kobo in Circular Quay.
It doesn’t help that it’s also the only Korean omakase in town. Nor the fact that it’s brand new.
Whatever the reason, no amount of refreshing the reservation page will get you a table, with no bookings available at the time of writing.
If you somehow manage to nab a stool at the “bap sang” (Korean dining table) you can expect around 15 courses, from pork bossam with ssamjang to abalone with herbed rice and dipping sauces.
Just please, let us know how you did it – and do you need a plus one?
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