Australia’s Hot 50 Restaurants and the enduring appeal of fine dining
Our state-by-state guide to exploring Australia’s most impressive new restaurants, as well as several of our old favourites with a new story to tell.
The businessmen at the next table are eating retired dairy cow. They’ve already been through oysters, caviar, potted crab and a bottle of very decent Beaujolais, and now it’s time to really let loose.
“Sir, your 900g CopperTree steak,” says the waiter as he eases the plate onto the table. We consult our menus, discovering the slice of dear old dairy cow is $225, thank you very much. Old mate is not sharing. His companion is dining on Wimmera duck with neck sausage, lentils, sherry and hibiscus ($86). And now they’ve finished the wine, they’re going in for a couple of negronis. Their conversation is sedate and cultured. After dinner, whatever deal they’ve been making is finalised. A successful night is had by all. If this sounds rather Great Gatsbyesque to you – if you are unfamiliar with the world of contemporary fine dining – then hold your outrage, please.
FINE DINING IS BACK
We are at The International – the shiny, glassy, seventh-level contemporary Australian grill that opened in Sydney’s Martin Place this autumn. It’s a venue where the mains sit not in the $40-$50 range of a few years ago, but in the $60-$80 range. There’s a quail pie with mushrooms, foie gras and madeira ($76), West Australian black marron with vadouvan butter and curry leaves ($84) and John Dory with cucumber, vermouth, tarragon and caviar ($72). You’ll need sides with that.
There are white cloths on the tables, decanted wines, fine glassware and a team of waiters gliding around making guests feel like kings and queens – or at least celebrities – for the night. The dining room on this cold, wet mid-week May night is full. Say what you like about fine dining but it’s alive and well.
Perhaps there are fewer places offering small and intricate plates of food than there were 10 or 20 years ago, but that does not mean the contemporary version of the fine diner does not continue to exist and flourish. These days the top Australian restaurants tend to be about glitz, service, wine, cocktails and high-quality ingredients (seafood and steak mostly), rather than about chefs showing off their artistic plating skills.
And the business continues to boom. Particularly in Sydney but also in Melbourne, restaurateurs maintain confidently that there is still an expense-account-holding crowd readymade for eating very expensive pieces of meat and drinking very expensive glasses of wine.
Apart from The International, recent upmarket arrivals in the Australian dining scene include Eleven Barrack from the well-established Bentley team, chef Josh Niland’s revamped seafood restaurant Saint Peter, and restaurateur Chris Lucas’s Maison Batard in Melbourne. It’s a market rich with creativity – and thankfully for the chefs and restaurateurs, people are prepared to pay.
This Hot 50 dining guide brought to you by The Weekend Australian Magazine is not all about the top end. Across the nation, restaurants of note and interest continue to be launched, relaunched and discovered anew, from tiny and affordable places all the way to fine diners. The focus of this list is new restaurants, and those with a new story to tell. Take The Malaya in Sydney’s George Street, for instance. The stalwart of Sydney dining recently moved into new digs, not the first time in its 62 years. It is a testament to its enduring popularity that it continues to thrive after six decades. Felicitations.
This is an introduction to some of the hottest and most talked about venues of the moment (as opposed to a list of perennial favourites). We hope it inspires you to step out of your own kitchen to enjoy the talents of our nation’s great chefs, sommeliers and hospitality staff. Dining is no longer cheap, but it’s loads of fun. Money well spent, you might say …
Top 50 Restaurants in Australia
New South Wales (and the ACT)
Neptune’s Grotto, Sydney
Everything touched by the team behind Pellegrino 2000, Clam Bar and the upcoming Grandfather’s turns to gold. When it comes to Neptune’s Grotto, that’s almost literal. The subterranean walls at this Sydney CBD restaurant are a fiery orange and yellow and the eponymous Neptune rises from the centre of the room, glowing like a lanternfish from deep beneath the waves. The food is solid gold too, taking many of its culinary cues from Italy’s northern regions, such as a gramigna con salsiccia (a sausage pasta), or a truffled-filled pasta that looks to Piedmont for inspiration.
Eleven Barrack, Sydney
The duo behind The Bentley Group of restaurants – chef Brent Savage and sommelier-with-the-mostest Nick Hildebrandt – keep rolling out hits, and Eleven Barrack is no exception. This CBD fine diner has dishes like a potato tart with blue cheese sauce and piccalilli, spanner crab and fish pie with shellfish bisque, and a range of steaks from the grill. Savage’s touch as a chef is brilliant; the room, with its chandeliers and red carpets, feels decidedly old-world glamour, and the atmosphere is lively. Go for lunch, when the power diners are wheeling and dealing across the table, and be sure to stay for the ginger-glazed key lime pie with coconut curd and finger lime; you’ll leave on the sugar high you needed.
bentleyrestaurantgroup.com.au/ elevenbarrack
FOR THE FULL LIST OF NEW SOUTH WALES RESTAURANTS, CLICK HERE
Queensland
Bar Miette, Brisbane
Sitting atop sister venue Supernormal, Bar Miette is McConnell’s easygoing, all-day diner adroitly composed with European savoir-faire. You could unwittingly slip into a French Riviera state of mind here, until you catch sight of Brisbane’s Story Bridge and Kangaroo Point across the way. But the view is a pleasing enhancement to a vibe that is relaxed and refined; try the spelt crumpets with whipped ricotta in the morning before moseying on to a doorstop muffaletta, prawn cocktail or charcuterie selections for lunch and dinner. Whether morning, afternoon or evening, there’s a cocktail to suit the hour – although sound advice suggests steering clear of the margarita frappé at 7am.
The Fifty Six, Brisbane
Naldham House was one of Brisbane’s big 2025 openings, thanks to anticipation for the heritage refit led by Halcyon House designer Anna Spiro, as well as the multiple drinking and dining venues across each level. The final puzzle piece is The Fifty Six on the building’s upper level, a modern Cantonese restaurant that celebrates the culinary influence of Chinese immigrants who call Queensland home. Standout dishes include the drunken prawn tart, Hervey Bay scallops with house XO, and wagyu served with chairman’s relish. If the word “chairman” rings a bell, that’s because Chef Gerald Ong has spent time at Canberra’s Chairman & Yip, where he honed his Chinese cooking techniques.
FOR THE FULL LIST OF QUEENSLAND RESTAURANTS, CLICK HERE
Victoria
Marmelo, Melbourne
A Sydney chef/restaurateur in a Melbourne hotel serving Portuguese food is a recipe that surely cannot work, you’d think. And yet Marmelo, the new Russell Street restaurant of Ross Lusted (formerly of Woodcut and the much-missed Bridge Room), is that mercurial thing – a venue that defies how it seems on paper. Occupying a street-level space in the seriously lovely Melbourne Place hotel, the restaurant is glassy and brassy and yet the warmth coming out of the kitchen in dishes such as wood-roasted cockerel with African spices, chilli and fried potatoes, and calamari with goat milk butter and soft herbs, is winning fans – and not just those bunkered down for the night in the hotel. Expect bold flavours, big ideas and a lot of gloss. This is a restaurant that shows that hotel dining can be so good you won’t want to leave the premises, even in a city crowded with options.
Maison Batard, Melbourne
Restaurateur Chris Lucas hasn’t divulged how much he spent creating Maison Batard, his extravagant homage to all things French in Bourke Street, but he’s going to have to sell a lot of chateaubriand to make his money back. Because to sit in this sumptuous dining room is to be pampered by visual splendour. From the cold seafood bars to the cocktail and desert trolleys that roam the room, there is always something to look at here. The food is sharp and precise French fare, a panoply of classics from the aforementioned steak for two served tableside, to oysters, Comté gougères, tuna Niçoise salade, lobster omelette, chicken liver paté, King George whiting with mustard Parisienne and roasted John Dory with chardonnay caper sauce. There’s steak, there’s salad, there’s duck, there’s seafood, there’s pommes frites, there’s petits pois et lardons, there’s chocolate mousse. There’s everything you could possibly want, and then some. Félicitations, Monsieur Lucas.
FOR THE FULL LIST OF VICTORIA RESTAURANTS, CLICK HERE
South Australia
Latteria Bar, Adelaide
There’s a Brady Bunch feel to the fit-out at this high-shine retro-style bar on Hutt Street. The walls are lined with records, the lounge area is semi-sunken and the mustard, baby blue, olive and crimson colour scheme evokes Marcia at her coolest. The food and drinks, however, are 100 per cent now. You might nibble on a neat little crab bun glammed up with barbecue corn and white pepper, or go big with a plate of house-made casarecce with ‘nduja and octopus. On the cocktail front, “The Best Cosmo Ever” makes a solid effort to live up to its name, while the wine list plays resolutely in the fun and funky space.
Station Road, Adelaide
When it comes to exceptional produce Adelaide arguably has an edge on its fellow capitals, thanks to the easy accessibility of farmlands and fisheries right on its doorstep. Station Road is one of the many restaurants in Adelaide making use of that bounty, serving fish that’s been pulled from the water the day it hits your plate, or vegetables that have arrived in the kitchen straight from the farm. The menu is French and Asian-influenced – think comté gougères with smoked bay leaf, or Beachport octopus with coriander and corn. The cocktails by celebrated bartender Saskia Lopes are also a huge drawcard.
FOR THE FULL LIST OF SOUTH AUSTRALIA RESTAURANTS, CLICK HERE
Tasmania
Tolpuddle Vineyard, Coal River Valley
Don’t come expecting a full restaurant. Instead, Tolpuddle Vineyard’s share-plate menu amounts to an elegant light lunch – all matched to the high-end chardonnay and pinot noir diners can sample as part of the vineyard’s wine flight experience. Tongola Curdy Goats Curd, from the milk of Swiss Toggenburg does in Huon, sets off the chardonnay, as do Tasmanian scallops baked in lemon and butter. Tête de Moine cheese is twirled with a girolle and a Huon Me crumpet comes with Calvisius white sturgeon caviar. There’s mushroom and artichoke pâté, plus a duck and prune terrine. Finish off with Kenyak chocolates from Hobart. And take home some wine for later.
FOR THE FULL LIST OF TASMANIA RESTAURANTS, CLICK HERE
Western Australia
De’sendent, Margaret River
On Margaret River’s main strip, chef Evan Hayter continues a journey that he started at off-grid winery Arimia in Yallingup. While he no longer has access to the vegie garden, free-range pigs and trout-stocked dam for which he became known, he’s working his connections with local fishers and market gardeners, and running a few head of wagyu cattle on a mate’s farm. The result is an elevated, metropolitan experience in this dark and intimate space designed by his partner Kerry Brooks. Across a $180 tasting menu try, say, kangaroo and fig tartare or Margaret River venison. Hayter’s cooking is creative, precise, delicious – and imbued with a sense of place.
Masseria, Margaret River
In a winery dining landscape over-populated with tasting menus and a focus on the intricate and avant-garde, this Italian-leaning opening is a welcome addition to the Margaret River scene. Ben Jacob, best known as chef/owner of the casual yet accomplished Lagoon at Yallingup, dips a toe back into the winery space (he was previously at Wise Wines) here with homely dishes that offer comfort. Go for local seafood, house-made pasta or the impressive pork cotoletta, taken with views of the Cherubino winery outside. This is long-lunch territory; there’s the promise of vineyard serenity, the run of the Cherubino labels, and (of course) tiramisu.
FOR THE FULL LIST OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA RESTAURANTS, CLICK HERE
Australia’s Hot 50 Restaurants has been compiled for The Australian Weekend Magazine by Elizabeth Meryment, with additional submissions from Alexandra Carlton, Lara Picone, Nick Ryan and Max Brearly.
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