• The Good Food Guide hub 2022

Let's talk about ice-cold gins and tonic. Sandy feet. Long lunches that lead into early dinners. Oysters and champagne-spiked mignonette. Lobster rolls. Individual pavlovas packed with mango and passionfruit curd. Let's talk about margaritas crusted with salt. Cherries so ripe they burst on impact. The sound of cicadas as you wander home.

Let's talk about this year's Guide. An up-to-date summer dining guide in magazine form – fresh, hot and full of goodness. In the interests of inclusiveness, fine dining sits alongside diverse neighbourhood eats, pizzerias and bars with great food.

As the blood that flows through the veins of these pages, we're committed to the support and success of our beloved hospitality industry. All things considered, it really isn't the year to be handing out hats, prizes and scores while everyone is struggling to get back on track.

Winter pretty much sucked for everyone, but restaurants were particularly kneecapped by the Delta wave. So instead, we've made the decision to publish a Guide entirely free of numbers. Rather than a carefully graded end-of-term report card, this year it's a celebration of restaurants at every pitch and price point.

Within these pages you'll find hundreds of dining suggestions, all of which meet our stringent criteria. While nothing is scored and there are no hats awarded, be assured that if it's in the Guide, it's good.

Let's talk about summer, and collectively erase winter. Let's eat. Let's drink. Let's dance.

–Myffy Rigby, NSW Editor

On the cover

Berowra Waters Inn pastry chef Lauren Eldridge has created a labne flavoured with a syrup of lime and banksia flower vinegar, covered it with yoghurt crunch, rhubarb sorbet, Davidson plum powder and finished it with rhubarb crisps. A worthy reason to hop on a seaplane, if ever there was one.

The Good Food Guide 2022 magazine will be published on November 30 with presenting partners Citi and Vittoria Coffee, and free with The Sydney Morning Herald. Also on sale from December 7 in newsagents and supermarkets.