The top 5 dishes to eat at Taste of Sydney

SYDNEY’S best chefs descend on Centennial Park next weekend for Taste of Sydney. Here’s the top five dishes you should have on your shopping list.

SYDNEY’S best restaurants will descend on Centennial Park next weekend (March 10-13) for Taste of Sydney, the annual event that has local foodies stocking up on totes and new Instagram filters.

We’re gearing up for a weekend of eating and rubbernecking as we hunt down the top dishes and the best chefs. New kid on the scene is Kensington Street Social, which will be doing tataki Hiramasa kingfish and a lamb rack dish we’ll be queuing for. Other festival stalwarts include Otto, Movida Sydney, Firedoor, and Kitchen by Mike (with a roasted pork belly and apple chutney dish).

WHAT'S ON PAGE: A must-attennd event on Sydney’s food calender, Taste of Sydney returns to Centennial Park from March 10-13 showcasing food and wine, hotest restaurants, local artisan producers and entertainment. Guests get the opportunity to meet celebrity chefs and test their culinary skills in cooking classes, panel discussions on food trends, wine tastings and lots of masterclasses. Details: tasteofsydney.com.au

Our friends at delicious. will be there, too, with Editor in Chief Kerrie McCallum hosting the Electrolux Taste Theatre on Saturday, and Digital Editor Kate Gibbs hosting the Electrolux Taste Theatre with the city’s top chefs on Friday and all weekend.

Here’s our pick on what to eat next weekend, where we’ll be queuing, and what the top dishes of the festival will be.

Biota’s braised wallaby taco

At Taste of Sydney last year chef James Viles, from Biota in the Southern Highlands, was handed the best-dish gong for his charcoal cracker with taramasalata. It was a striking black palm-sized bite dotted with salmon pearls and baby herbs and the Biota team turned out thousands of the dish over the weekend. So all eyes are on what Viles will make this year at the festival, and he’s promised a salted seaweed pretzel with smoked cheese sauce, a wood-scented dish of charcoal squid with chicken and grain stock, a salted caramel dessert with “pine”, and what we might tag as the great potential for the festival this year: braised wallaby taco with fermented wild greens and bean paste.

Peter Gilmore’s famous lamington from Bennelong

Finally, a chance to try that famous lamington that has critics and punters reeling. You can’t just queue and stock up on the square of cherry jam coconut cream ice cream and sponge, coated in an impossibly glossy chocolate ganache and surrounded by a halo of liquid nitrogen coconut milk parfait ‘dessicated coconut’, which dances and melts.

But the mastermind behind Quay and Bennelong, chef Peter Gilmore, is holding an exclusive cooking masterclass at Taste of Sydney, and you can join in. He’s teaching a small class how to cook his famous lamington, as well as his red claw yabbies with buckwheat pikelets, cultured cream and lemon jam. delicious. has teamed up with Gilmore to reveal his secrets to guests to the Electrolux Taste Theatre on Saturday March 12. Then, you eat. Tickets are still available.

Porteno’s porchetta with braised green beans, lemon and BBQ’d chilli chimichurri

Look for the tatts. The Porteno team are known for their elaborate body art, their forearm inking that gives them that slightly rogue reputation of doing what they do best, on their own terms. But it’s the porchetta we’re here for. The rolled pork on a spit, its bubbled crunch of crackling, served in thick slices with beans and chilli chimichurri, is festival food at its best. They have the fires going all day, but it’s astonishing how quickly that porchetta disappears.

Colin Fassnidge’s suckling pig

MKR judge and chef at 4Fourteen, Colin Fassnidge, will take the heat out of the kitchen when he joins his restaurant partner and chef Carla Jones as they roast a whole suckling pig over coals outside at Taste of Sydney. A regular feature at 4Fourteen, the pig is turned on a rotisserie, is known for its paper-thin, golden and crisp skin, while the meat is everything you want in your pork: juicy, packed with meaty flavour. It’s paired with spiced slaw and pickles. Pick up a white chocolate parfait popsicle with dulce de leche and crumble while you’re there.

Three Blue Ducks’ free-range fried chicken with hot sauce

Byron Bay is coming to Sydney next weekend, with the chef who gave us yet another reason to visit our favourite not-so-hippy-anymore holiday destination. The Three Blue Ducks chef Darren Robertson opened Three Blue Ducks at the Farm in Byron Bay last year, and now he’s bringing his free-range chickens to us, fried and golden, and paired with The Farm’s own hot sauce. This could be the must-have dish of Taste this year.

More details can be found at the Taste of Sydney website.

This article originally appeared on delicious.com.au.

Originally published as The top 5 dishes to eat at Taste of Sydney