The 100 Best Restaurants 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.

Open-fire Middle Eastern cooking in the Sydney CBD, where ironbark wood and charcoal from the Blue Mountains do the structural work rather than playing atmosphere. The kitchen pulls from Levantine and North African tradition, including medieval Arabic manuscripts, and the debt shows in the layering of spice rather than any museum-piece earnestness. It landed at number 14 on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, though it behaves nothing like a steakhouse.

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.

Potts Point's fully vegan fine dining room went plant-only before the rest of the industry caught up, which is either admirable timing or a very long bet that paid off. The chef behind it has spent years making vegetables do things vegetables don't usually do at this price point, and the kitchen earns its three chef hats from the Australian Good Food Guide without leaning on novelty. Book ahead; the room is small and the cooking has a following.

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.

A wood-fired kitchen with a short menu and no apologies for either, Ester is a casual Italian-leaning restaurant in Chippendale where the off-duty chef crowd fills the room most nights. The fit-out is minimal and the mood deliberately unhurried, which gives the cooking space to make its point. Locally sourced ingredients carry most of the weight, and the team lets them.

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.

Corn isn't a side note here; it's the whole argument. Maiz is a casual Mexican restaurant on Enmore Road where the chef has built the menu around masa in earnest, from esquites broth sharp with lime and seven-chile mayonnaise to tetelas, corn pockets that happen to work for gluten-free and vegan diners without advertising the fact. Sydney's Mexican scene is not exactly crowded with this level of conviction.

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.

Neil Perry's Italian restaurant in Double Bay is built around the aperitivo rhythm: Martinis and spritzes arrive first, then antipasti, housemade pasta, seafood, and steak. The beef program leans into rare Australian breeds, including grass-fed Chianina, cooked simply enough that the sourcing does the talking. Ranked 27th on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, though the room reads more like a generous Italian trattoria than a temple to beef.

A two-floor Cantonese restaurant that seats 240 people without feeling like an airport terminal, which is some feat. Raw brick walls hung with portraits of 1930s Shanghai women set the mood, and the menu runs to 80-odd dishes roaming across Southern China. It's loud, it's handsome, and the kitchen genuinely manages sour, sweet, umami, and spice all at once rather than just promising to.

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.

Floor 55 of the Rialto Towers, with views stretching from the Docklands to the Dandenongs, and the interior lined in kangaroo leather and local stone. Vue de Monde is a fine dining tasting menu restaurant where the French technique that built its reputation has given way to something more distinctly Australian: macadamia, kelp, marron, Tasmanian mountain pepper. The room is theatrical enough that you'll want to dress for it.

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.

Moored at D'Albora Marinas with water views in every direction, this is a fine-dining Italian seafood restaurant where the cocktail and gelato bar sits centre stage like it owns the room. The menu skips meat entirely, leaning into sustainable seafood prepared with enough technique to keep things interesting without taking itself too seriously. A Three Chef Hat winner from the Australian Good Food Guide, it draws a crowd that dresses up slightly but still orders dessert without guilt.

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 on the rooftop of COMO The Treasury, this fine dining room looks out over the Swan River through floor-to-ceiling glass, with a terrace for when Perth cooperates. The menu follows the six seasons of the Noongar calendar rather than the usual four, so what lands on the table shifts with the wildflowers and the weather. Local farmers and foragers drive the tasting menu, and the Australian Good Food Guide has awarded it three Chef Hats.

A red thread of light twists across the ceiling of this moody Japanese fine dining room on Flinders Lane, its glow picked up by red plates below. Black marble, dark granite, and plush banquettes set the tone for a seasonal Kojin menu that moves between small plates and larger composed dishes. The Australian Good Food Guide gave it two chef hats, and the room feels like it was designed with that ambition in mind from the start.

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.

South of France cooking in a Darling Harbour hotel, with wine racks lining the walls and a menu that leans on local produce shaped into something unmistakably French. The kitchen uses coal and char alongside classical technique, so there's smoke and richness alongside the bright, coastal flavors you'd expect. A polished, unhurried kind of dinner, the sort where you dress up a little and nobody feels self-conscious about it. The Australian Good Food Guide awards it two Chef Hats.

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.

A 28-seat fine dining room on Given Terrace where the chef's Sardinian roots quietly run the kitchen, pulling contemporary Italian cooking away from white-tablecloth formality toward something warmer. Arancini shaped like mushrooms give you a sense of the playfulness on the plate. The footpath spills over into aperitivo territory when the weather cooperates. A two-hat entry in the Australian Good Food Guide for a room this small is a lot of weight for one terrace house to carry.

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.