The Best Australian Food in Australia

Josh Niland built a reputation on treating fish the way other chefs treat beef, using every part of it, which at Saint Peter means ice cream made with fish eyes instead of eggs. It's a modern Australian restaurant inside a handsome old pub in Paddington, and it ranked 66th on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list in 2025. The cooking is committed enough that Niland's books on the subject won James Beard Awards, which tells you this is not a fish-and-chips situation.

The sourdough starter here has been alive longer than the restaurant, which tells you something about the kitchen's relationship with patience. Sixpenny is a fine dining destination in a quiet inner-west suburb, where the menu leans on fermentation the way other places lean on butter. The mead vinegar custard with strawberry has been on since 2016 and shows no signs of leaving. Four chef hats from the Australian Good Food Guide, and bookings to match.

The sails of the Opera House aren't just backdrop here, they're roof. Bennelong is a multi-level modern Australian restaurant with a casual bar on one end and a formal dining room with harbor views on the other, so you can calibrate your ambition and your wallet accordingly. The kitchen runs seasonal Australian produce through deconstructed comfort classics, and the wine cellar is stocked to match the occasion. The setting does a lot of the heavy lifting, but the food keeps pace.

Fire is the organizing principle at this wood-grill restaurant in Fortitude Valley, not a talking point. The kitchen runs beef, seafood, and vegetables through the same charcoal logic, building depth without burying the ingredient. It's spread across three levels of a heritage building, from a main dining room to a wine bar to a terrace, and the whole thing moves with a calm, unhurried rhythm. Agnes holds a spot on the World's 101 Best Steak Restaurants list.

The open hearth in the middle of the room isn't décor; it's the kitchen's organizing principle, and everything on the menu follows that logic. This is a fire-led modern Australian restaurant in Norwood where wood smoke finds its way into vegetables and seafood as readily as into the dry-aged beef and Wagyu the place is known for. Jake Kellie, who came up at Burnt Ends, runs the hearth with an ease that keeps it from feeling like a stunt. Ranked 16th on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

Finnish chef Pasi Petänen runs this modern bistro and wine bar on King Street, where the cooking roams freely across borders without making a fuss about it. The long moody bar is well-stocked, the wooden tables fill with a mixed local crowd, and the menu moves between fermented things, excellent pasta, and good bread in a way that feels loose but considered. A Discovery pick from The 50.

Cumin-spiced lamb skewers on a barbecue stove at Chinatown Night Markets were the whole operation once. Now Firepop is a permanent Modern Australian restaurant on Enmore Road, where those same skewers sit alongside dishes that treat waste-minimizing as a creative constraint rather than a virtue to announce. The buttermilk panna cotta with pickled strawberries and South Australian olive oil has become a reason people come back. One Chef Hat from the Australian Good Food Guide.

Perched on the Western Broadwalk of the Sydney Opera House, this modern Australian restaurant draws on Indigenous food traditions that predate the building by a considerable stretch. Chef Mark Olive builds the menu around native ingredients, wattle seed, bush honey, pepperberries, saltbush, things most Sydney dining rooms treat as garnish rather than foundation. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded it a Chef Hat.

The Art Deco banking hall on Hunter Street sets the stage: marble columns, dark timber, and a warm golden light that makes a Wednesday feel like an occasion. This is a steakhouse, and the beef programme is the point, with dry-aged cuts cooked over a wood and charcoal grill. The wine list is one of the more serious in the country. Ranked 38th on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which seems about right for a room this sure of itself.

Harbour views through floor-to-ceiling glass, leather banquettes, and Australian art on the walls set the tone at this upscale steak restaurant inside Sydney's International Hotel. The kitchen dry-ages Wagyu and pasture-raised beef in-house, then cooks over wood and charcoal with the confidence of people who don't need to explain themselves. It landed at number 33 on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which tracks.

An open fire grill anchors everything at Scott Pickett's modern Australian restaurant in South Yarra, where dry-aged beef meets live coals with the kind of discipline that makes you stop mid-bite. The room runs to warm wood and natural textures, the wine list leans Australian, and the service has that easy confidence that never tips into theatre. Ranked among the World's Best Steak Restaurants, it holds an Australian Good Food Guide Chef Hat too.

Raw plaster walls, hand-thrown ceramics, and aged timber floors set a quietly considered scene in this upscale tasting menu restaurant on High Street. Clinton McIver, formerly of Vue de Monde, builds long menus around texture and geography as much as flavor. The Sensory Menu is the full journey; a shorter lunch version exists for the commitment-averse. The kind of room where the lighting is obviously not an afterthought.

The farm came first, and the menu follows whatever it produces. Brae is a fine dining destination on a rural back road outside Birregurra, where the chef Dan Hunter, formerly of Mugaritz, runs an organic property with an olive grove and beehives and builds tasting menus around it. Six suites mean you can sleep off the whole endeavor. The kind of place that makes the drive feel like part of the plan.

Perched on the Maxwell Winery estate with vineyard views rolling out to the Fleurieu Peninsula, this fine dining restaurant runs a multi-course tasting menu built around South Australian produce, matched to wines from the cellar below. The chef brought a Michelin-trained European technique to McLaren Vale, and the combination of stacked stone walls, polished timber, and floor-to-ceiling glass keeps the setting from feeling too serious about itself.

The dining room sits inside the Adelaide Botanic Gardens, which means fifty-plus acres of garden are essentially the mood lighting. This is a tasting-menu restaurant where the kitchen, led by Jamie Musgrave, builds each course around native ingredients and seasonal botanicals foraged or sourced from what's growing nearby. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded it four Chef Hats. Dress accordingly and clear the evening.

Glass walls frame the estate vines at this winery restaurant in the Margaret River region, where the kitchen works in Modern Australian and the wine list draws straight from the property. The room leans formal enough for a celebration but never stiff, and the service knows the cellar cold. Australian Good Food Guide Four Chef Hats. Book ahead, dress up a little, and clear the afternoon.

Perched on Razorback Road in the Adelaide Hills, Anvers Wines pairs its estate wines with a full regional dining room built around the same philosophy: everything comes from here. The menu leans Modern Australian, shaped by a chef who treats local produce as both ingredient and argument. The Australian Good Food Guide has awarded three Chef Hats. It's the kind of lunch where the wine list is short because everything on it was made outside the window.

Ben Shewry's fine-dining room in a quiet Ripponlea street is the kind of place where a spoonful of native honey arrives as a course and somehow that feels completely logical. The degustation menu moves through ingredients most menus have never heard of, leaning hard into Australian native produce and the kind of sourcing that borders on obsessive. It holds three chef hats from the Australian Good Food Guide. Clear your evening and your card.

You reach this fine dining room by boat, which sets the tone before you've seen a menu. Perched on Calabash Point above the Hawkesbury, Berowra Waters Inn has been doing degustation with serious intent for longer than most of its guests have been alive. The chef's modern Australian cooking leans into native and coastal ingredients, and the water views do exactly what the water views always do here. An old-school institution, held to a high standard by its own long reputation.

The dining room looks out over the Piccadilly Valley from a grand old Adelaide Hills homestead, and the kitchen leans into that view with a degustation menu built almost entirely around South Australian produce. This is fine dining with a regional fixation, so expect multiple courses, expert wine pairings, and the kind of unhurried pacing that assumes you have nowhere to be. The Australian Good Food Guide gave it three Chef Hats.

Fire does the heavy lifting at this fine dining room inside the Ritz-Carlton, where the kitchen runs on embers and smoke rather than the usual brigade of burners. The menu tracks Western Australian seasons closely, pulling from producers scattered between the Kimberley and the Great Southern. Elizabeth Quay shimmers outside the windows, which the room knows and uses well. Three Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide.

Stone walls and timber beams meet a sleek bar stocked with the estate's own wines, which sets the tone for what follows. Hentley Farm is a fine dining destination in the Barossa where the menu is a surprise each visit, built around foraged, caught, and garden-grown ingredients from the property and its surrounds. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded it Three Chef Hats. No printed menu to fuss over, just whatever the estate offers up that day.

Sea urchin mousse arrives before flambéed rock lobster, which tells you most of what you need to know about Laura. It's a fine dining destination on the Mornington Peninsula, set among a vineyard and sculpture park with Western Port in the near distance. The menu takes its cues from the surrounding landscape, the wine list goes everywhere, and the service is the kind that makes a long lunch feel like the only reasonable use of a day. Three Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide.

Floor-to-ceiling windows keep the vineyard in the frame while you eat, which is either very clever or a little on the nose, depending on your tolerance for wine country theater. LVN is a fine-dining tasting menu restaurant on the Bird in Hand estate in the Adelaide Hills, earning three Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide. The kitchen pulls produce from the Hills, Finniss, and Tasmania, running it through a menu that doesn't announce itself too loudly.

The vegetables on your plate were growing on the farm outside the window a very short while ago. Megalong is a fine-dining restaurant in the Blue Mountains, two hours from Sydney, where the kitchen draws almost entirely from the on-site gardens and surrounding valley. Polished wood floors, bifold doors, pendant lighting, and the kind of natural light that makes everyone look good. It holds three Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide.

Fine dining that occasionally serves fried chicken and doughnuts without any apparent shame. Nel runs a rotating 11-course degustation in a moody CBD room of exposed brick and open kitchen, where the theme changes entirely and regulars come back to see what the kitchen has cooked up next. The format is unmistakably tasting-menu serious; the attitude is something else. Three Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide.

Inside the HOTA Gallery on the Gold Coast, Palette is a fine dining restaurant where the art on the walls is not entirely incidental to what arrives on the plate. The room is built for celebration: private dining, long evenings, the kind of occasion that calls for a cocktail first. The kitchen earns three Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide, and the cooking runs to lobster soufflé and Wagyu with foie gras.

A former mental asylum in the Derwent Valley, now filled with natural light and the smell of wood smoke, turns out to be exactly the right setting for a restaurant this serious about Tasmanian produce. The team behind Australia's best-known cookery school runs the kitchen, leaning on fermentation, pickling, and open-fire cooking, while keeping the plates spare enough that a raw tomato with anchovy sauce can hold its own.

Perched above the Hawkesbury Valley inside a gated retreat, this degustation restaurant earns its two Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide by building menus almost entirely from what grows or grazes within an hour's drive. Charcoal and fire do the cooking, indigenous ingredients flavour the plates, and the glass frontage frames a Sydney skyline edged by Blue Mountains ridgeline. Entry is by appointment only, which keeps the room quiet enough to hear yourself think.

Native Australian ingredients anchor the menu at this fine dining room in Springwood, where the Blue Mountains are less a backdrop than an active ingredient. The kitchen leans into the landscape, pulling flavors from country the Gundungurra and Darug peoples have known far longer than any restaurant critic. The room is intimate and unhurried, the kind of place where the service notices things. Two Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide.

Fire anchors the kitchen at this hotel fine dining room in Melbourne's CBD, where the menu moves through Australian land and sea with the restraint of a place that doesn't need to shout. The produce comes from named farmers and fishermen around the country, and the cooking lets that lineage do the work. An Australian Good Food Guide Two Hat restaurant, with a wine list that takes provenance as seriously as the food does.

White-clothed tables and fresh native flowers set the tone at this modern Australian restaurant tucked into the shops along Peregian Beach's main strip. The menu moves through creative, produce-led cooking, and on warm afternoons the alfresco tables spill out toward the square. The Australian Good Food Guide gives it two Chef Hats, which tells you roughly what to expect from the kitchen's ambitions. Long lunches are the move here.

Floor-to-ceiling windows frame Balmoral Beach from every seat, which makes the nautical theme feel earned rather than decorative. This is a fine-dining restaurant on the Sydney Harbour foreshore, all French blue linen and an open kitchen that spills into a lounge furnished with Moroccan rugs. The chef came up through Sixpenny, and the seasonal menu leans into the harbour setting without hammering the point. A 350-bottle wine list and two Good Food Guide Chef Hats.

The wrap-around green leather banquettes and a festoon-lit terrace set the tone at this contemporary European bistro in the NSW hinterland, where two sisters run the room and the kitchen with equal ease. The cooking leans into coastal produce, and the Australian Good Food Guide has handed out two Chef Hats. Murwillumbah is not where most people expect to find a restaurant at this pitch, which is half the point.

The name comes from "bombora," an Aboriginal word for the shallow reef formations visible from the deck at low tide, which sets the tone for everything that follows. This is Hamilton Island's fine dining room, sitting inside the sculptural Yacht Club and leaning hard into native ingredients and seasonal regional produce. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded it Two Chef Hats, and the view gives the kitchen stiff competition.

Lunch among the vines at this winery restaurant means a seasonal menu that pulls almost everything from the kitchen garden on the property, paired with estate pours chosen to match. You can sit outside under umbrellas with rows of vines in view, or stay inside where it's warmer and quieter. The food is a step beyond winery-cafe standard, which the two Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide would suggest. The kitchen leans modern Australian with a light hand.

The dessert buffet alone has its own dedicated zone, which tells you something about priorities here. Citrique is a Modern Australian restaurant inside the JW Marriott on the Gold Coast, built around interactive dining stations that drift from fresh sushi and seafood through Asian curries and satays to European plates. The Australian Good Food Guide gives it Two Chef Hats, and the à la carte menu leans into local sourcing.

Fine dining inside a grand Victorian house on the edge of the Jamison Valley, with leadlight windows, crystal chandeliers, and two open fireplaces doing their best to distract you from the escarpment view outside. The menu runs modern Australian, leaning on local produce and the kind of technique that earns Darleys two Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide. It's a special-occasion room that knows it, and dresses accordingly.

Fine dining in a suburb you'd never expect it, inside a room dressed in French Renaissance furniture, antique paintings, and crystal decanters that look borrowed from a minor aristocrat's estate sale. Deer Duck Bistro runs a degustation menu threading Modern Australian cooking through European technique, and the Australian Good Food Guide awarded it Two Chef Hats. The candles and old silver do a lot of work, but the kitchen keeps up.

Set on a vast cattle station an hour from Brisbane, this fine dining room draws almost everything on the plate from its own market garden, orchard, beehives, and free-range farm, or from producers just down the road. Fire, smoke, coal pits, and a fermentation room full of pickled jars do the heavy lifting in the kitchen. The Australian Good Food Guide awards it Two Chef Hats, and the menu shifts whenever the land says so.

Waterfront tables face the Noosa River directly, which makes lingering over a long lunch feel less like indulgence and more like good sense. Lanai is a Modern Australian restaurant built around shareable plates, sustainably sourced seafood, and native ingredients, with a mood that's polished enough to feel special but loose enough that nobody's rushing you. It holds two Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide, and the sunset view does a fair amount of the heavy lifting.

Deep navy walls, brushed brass fittings, and velvet curtains set the register before anyone opens a menu: this is a fine dining room that takes itself seriously in the best way a Gold Coast restaurant can. Little Truffle is the kind of Modern Australian spot where you choose between à la carte and a four-course menu, linger over duck and house-made pasta, and leave later than planned. The Australian Good Food Guide gave it Two Chef Hats.

The rammed-earth dining room sits among Hunter Valley vines with the Brokenback Range filling the windows, which does most of the work before the food arrives. Margan is a farm-to-table restaurant on a working vineyard and olive grove where the kitchen garden and Suffolk lambs are quite literally next door. The Australian Good Food Guide has given it two Chef Hats. Bring a tolerance for long lunches and an empty boot for wine.

Wide timber decks look out over the estate vines in the Adelaide Hills, and on a clear day the valley stretches far enough to justify a second glass. This vineyard restaurant pairs a monthly changing seasonal menu with wines grown on the property, and the open fireplace makes the rustic interior a reasonable argument for winter visits too. The Australian Good Food Guide handed it Two Chef Hats.

Rolling Adelaide Hills framing the windows sets the mood before the food arrives. Ondeen is a Modern Australian dining room in Verdun, a short drive from Hahndorf, built around the idea that the region itself is the ingredient, with local produce and an all-Adelaide Hills wine list doing most of the talking. The spaces flex for private events and celebrations, and the Two Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide suggest the kitchen is keeping pace with the view.

Seasonal produce and regional producers set the agenda at this relaxed fine-dining room on Jardine Street in Kingston. The kitchen leans into what's good right now, from wagyu to winter truffles, and the wine list pulls in both local bottles and museum selections worth lingering over. It holds two Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide. The kind of place that handles a birthday and a midweek dinner with equal ease, which is harder than it sounds.

Whole-leaf oolong and black teas sourced from Kenya and Taiwan are the anchor here, not a backdrop to something else. Oxi Tea Room is a high tea spot in Carlton where the tea is treated with the seriousness usually reserved for wine, and the housemade desserts lean into native Australian ingredients, lemon myrtle, green ants, and all. It holds two Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide, which tracks for a room that takes the kettle this seriously.

Tasting menus run from three to nine courses here, plant-based or protein-led, so you can calibrate how serious an evening you want. Perspective is an intimate modern Australian fine-diner on Brunswick Street in Fortitude Valley, the kind of place where the kitchen leans hard into seasonal and local produce, and the room is styled to match that ambition. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded it Two Chef Hats. Private dining seats up to fourteen.

Named after a lavender town north of Marseille, Sault sits on a working lavender farm outside Daylesford, overlooking its own lake and the Wombat State Forest. It's a modern Australian fine-dining room where the kitchen draws from onsite gardens and local producers, changing the menu each season. The two Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide suggest the cooking is doing more than trading on the view, which, it should be said, is doing quite a lot of the work.