The Best Restaurants in Australia

Dry-aged seafood sits at the center of everything here, a Japanese restaurant on Queen Street where the counter omakase and chirashi bowls draw a quiet, loyal lunch crowd from the surrounding offices. The menu runs from quick sashimi plates to a full omakase sitting, so the room works for both a grabbed weekday meal and something slower. The Australian Good Food Guide gave it a Chef Hat, which tracks with the precision on the plate.

The wood-fired grill does a lot of the talking at this waterfront restaurant and bar, where the menu leans hard into Far North Queensland seafood and regional produce. The deck looks out over the marina and the mountains beyond, which is a combination that makes it easy to stay for sunset whether or not you planned to. A One Chef Hat from the Australian Good Food Guide, and the kind of place Cairns locals bring people they want to impress.

Dinner here is dinner and a show, in the most literal sense: chefs work a teppan grill tableside while you sit close enough to feel the heat. Samurai is a teppanyaki restaurant on King William Road, the kind of place where Wagyu lands in front of you still sizzling. The Australian Good Food Guide gave it a Chef Hat. Groups and corporate bookings fill the room, which means the energy tends toward celebration whether you planned on that or not.

Lunch on a winery estate in the Swan Valley, with vineyard rows framing the window and estate pours arriving alongside. The kitchen leans Modern Australian with a wood-fired streak, turning local produce into the kind of meal that makes the drive feel like the whole point. The Australian Good Food Guide has given it a Chef Hat. Sit outside under old vines if the day allows; the alfresco tables fill fast with people who've clearly done this before.

Serafino sits on a winery estate in McLaren Vale, ringed by ancient gums and a lake that makes the dining room feel like it wandered in from a painting. The restaurant runs a Modern Australian menu with Italian leanings, leaning hard into seasonal produce, so the food shifts more than the view does. Weddings fill the calendar, but the cellar door keeps it honest. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded it a Chef Hat.

A tandoor and a dosa menu in the same room as chilli saffron foam tells you everything about where Seven Spices is headed. It's a modern Indian restaurant in Lane Cove that pulls from street food, slow curries, and flame-cooked classics without treating any of them as lesser than the others. The room skews toward families and celebrations, and the Australian Good Food Guide awarded it a Chef Hat.

Sandwiched between two heritage sandstone buildings down a Surry Hills laneway, Shaffa is a Middle Eastern restaurant and bar built around shared plates and a deliberately festive mood. The space pulls from the energy of a bazaar, all bold spices and low lighting, and it suits a long table of friends more than a quiet Tuesday. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded it a Chef Hat.

The bifold windows fold back so the ocean breeze does half the decorating at this casual all-day restaurant on the Lennox Head beachfront. The menu runs Modern Australian with a local-produce lean, moving from avo toast in the morning to grilled octopus and massaman-glazed beef by evening. It's the kind of place where a beach walk becomes a long lunch without anyone quite noticing the transition. One Chef Hat from the Australian Good Food Guide.

A share-format Modern Australian restaurant near Circular Quay, Silvester's sits on a corner that's had butchers and serious produce on it for generations. The menu moves from smaller plates through to bigger dishes, building in a way that feels designed rather than accidental. The room leans convivial rather than hushed. An Australian Good Food Guide Chef Hat.

The menu at this fine-dining room in Penrith is built around a loose rule: nothing on the plate has traveled more than 50 kilometres to get there. That radius pulls in the Hawkesbury, the Blue Mountains foothills, and the Nepean Valley, and the kitchen leans into it rather than hiding it behind French technique. Modern Australian cooking with a genuine sense of where it is, and a One Chef Hat from the Australian Good Food Guide to back the ambition.

A lively modern Australian restaurant on Oracle Boulevard where the room is styled for lingering, not rushing. The menu leans contemporary and social, built around dishes meant to be shared around a well-set table. It holds a Chef Hat from the Australian Good Food Guide, which signals serious cooking without the stiff-backed formality that usually comes with it. Broadbeach's Gold Coast crowd fills it out nicely.

The dining room inside The Langham takes its name from a Chinese dynasty, which sets the tone pretty clearly. T'ang Court is a formal contemporary Cantonese restaurant where the kitchen works through roasted meats, dim sum, and Southern Chinese classics with careful technique. The setting is polished enough that you'll want to dress for it, and the service follows suit. One Chef Hat from the Australian Good Food Guide.

Rooke Street is not where you'd expect a quietly serious modern Australian restaurant, but Taste. by Bold Cuisine has earned a One Chef Hat from the Australian Good Food Guide doing exactly that. The menu runs on Tasmanian produce treated with real care, matched to a considered wine list. The room reads elegant without being stiff, which helps when the food is clearly asking you to pay attention.

A Greek taverna steps from the sand in Kingscliff, with ocean views that do most of the decorating before a dish arrives. The menu is built for sharing, modern Greek in spirit, and the kitchen takes its time with each service in a way that quietly discourages checking your phone. Sunday's sustainable banquet is a particular reason to plan around the tides. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded it a Chef Hat.

Bare brick walls, a communal table, and twenty seats total set the terms at Templo, a small neighborhood restaurant on Patrick Street where Modern Australian cooking runs through an Italian filter. The menu is built for sharing and almost entirely sourced from within an hour's drive, which in Tasmania means you're eating pretty well. The 50 Discovery list picked it up, which tracks.

Coral Sea views from the balcony set the mood at this casual Japanese restaurant on the ground floor of Townsville's Ardo Hotel, where the kitchen takes its cues from Tokyo's brighter, louder side. The menu moves through sushi, sashimi, and tempura, with a cocktail list that leans on sake and yuzu to match. Relaxed enough for a weeknight, polished enough that you won't feel underdressed if you made an effort.

A restored Queenslander on a quiet New Farm street, this all-day spot shifts from a sunlit verandah breakfast to a wine bar with fairy lights in the courtyard once the evening cools. Modern Australian share plates and a thoughtfully chosen wine list fill the night hours, while mornings bring specialty coffee and brunch cocktails that suggest the kitchen doesn't take the AM too seriously. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded it a Chef Hat.

A white-tablecloth restaurant on the edge of Lake Burley Griffin, with an open fireplace and the kind of parkland views that make the city feel very far away. The menu changes with the seasons and leans toward local produce, the sort of place where the lamb actually has a postcode. It holds an Australian Good Food Guide Chef Hat, and bookings are essential, which the waterfront setting makes easy to understand.

Bi-fold windows frame a sweep of Terrigal Beach from the dining room, and the kitchen treats that view as a challenge rather than a crutch. This is a fine dining room built around Central Coast producers: local honey, native herbs, sustainable seafood from people the team actually knows by name. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded it a Chef Hat. Sydneysiders come down for the weekend and rarely book just once.

A converted old schoolhouse on a quiet road outside Byron, The Hut is a lunch spot that does Mediterranean food the way a long weekend should feel. Whitewashed walls, polished floors, and garden light filtering through big windows set a mood that's part coastal shack, part somewhere you'd actually eat well. The menu moves through Spanish, Greek, and Italian territory without a lot of fuss, and the Australian Good Food Guide awarded it a Chef Hat.

Open-air dining room perched at the edge of Hamilton Island, where the Coral Sea fills every window and the Whitsundays do most of the decorating. The Long Pavilion runs breakfast through dinner, Modern Australian menu in hand, moving from a tropical morning spread to sunset plates of kangaroo tartare and bay lobster while the light changes colour outside. A One Chef Hat pick from the Australian Good Food Guide, and a room that knows it has a view to live up to.

The Gold Coast Hinterland's forested ridgeline is the backdrop here, and the kitchen leans into that setting hard, pulling produce from nearby farms and the forest floor for a Modern Australian menu that sits somewhere between relaxed and formally ambitious. Think Wagyu, bay lobster, and foraged greens treated with quiet seriousness. The room reads like a farmhouse that tidied up for guests. It holds an Australian Good Food Guide Chef Hat.

The floor-to-ceiling windows frame Megalong Valley so dramatically it almost upstages the food. Set inside the historic Hydro Majestic Hotel, The Wintergarden is a European dinner restaurant that also does high tea, surrounded by ornate fireplaces and furnishings that lean hard into grand old mountain resort. The one Chef Hat from the Australian Good Food Guide confirms the kitchen is doing something more than scenery work.

Floor-to-ceiling windows look out over Tamar Valley vineyards at this wood-fired Modern Australian restaurant beside Velo Wines, north of Launceston. The menu shifts constantly around what's grown nearby, including produce bartered from neighbors up the road, and the kitchen leans on fermentation and pickling to stretch the seasons. It holds an Australian Good Food Guide Hat. Lunch is the main event, relaxed and pastoral, with the smell of the fire doing half the talking.

A country pub that's been around forever in the Gippsland flatlands, Tinamba Hotel runs from a proper dining room and conservatory through to a casual bar and verandah, so you can dress it up or down depending on the mood. The kitchen leans hard into local produce, which in this corner of Victoria means excellent meat and dairy country. The Australian Good Food Guide has given it a Chef Hat, which in a town this size feels like a quiet act of defiance.

A Surry Hills spot where Australian and Asian cooking get folded into each other in ways that feel less like fusion and more like a genuine point of view. The menu shifts familiar territory into something harder to categorize, which is either exciting or unsettling depending on your mood. The room is small enough that the kitchen's curiosity feels personal. It holds a Chef Hat from the Australian Good Food Guide.

The open kitchen sends smoke and char into a sleek dining room of soft light and dark wood on Miller Street in North Sydney. Toki is a fusion bistro and bar where the menu leans toward big-format sharing, think tomahawk steaks and beef tartare dressed with tendon crisps and caviar. The cocktail bar pulls its own weight. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded it a Chef Hat.

A renovated corner store in the heritage-listed village of Millthorpe, with white-clothed tables, polished wood floors, and lighting turned low enough that everyone looks like they're up to something. Tonic is a set-menu dinner spot running a five-course chef's choice format, so you're along for the ride, which in this case includes local truffles and regional wine pairings. The Australian Good Food Guide awards it a Chef Hat.

Inside Maffco Brewery and Distillery, TUCKA is a farm-to-fork restaurant that takes Gippsland's seasonal produce seriously enough to keep the menu in constant motion. The kitchen leans hard into what the region grows and raises, so what you order depends entirely on when you show up, which is more or less the point. An Australian Good Food Guide One Chef Hat restaurant out in the Gippsland countryside, which is its own kind of argument.

A Pisco Sour is the obvious opening move at this Peruvian restaurant inside the Pan Pacific Perth, and the room, all grey matte walls, blond timber, and terracotta tile, gives you somewhere calm to drink it. The menu moves through ceviche, grilled octopus, and wood-kissed meat dishes, tracing the coasts and highlands without turning it into a geography lesson. One Chef Hat from the Australian Good Food Guide.