The Best Places to Eat and Do in Australia

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.

A sleek steakhouse on one of Brisbane's better-dressed streets, where the whole point is the cut and the kitchen knows it. The room runs warm and the service is polished without being stiff, which makes it equally good for a long lunch with clients or a dinner where you're trying to impress someone. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded it two Chef Hats, which tracks for a place this serious about the beef.

Fino is a sit-down winery restaurant in the old bottling hall of the Seppeltsfield estate, a heritage-listed room with enough light that your lunch photos will look better than you do. The short sharing menu leans on whatever the surrounding farms are sending over, with a wood-fired grill doing the heavy lifting. It holds a Michelin Bib Gourmand and two Good Food Guide hats, and lunch here tends to run long.

Flower Drum has been a Melbourne institution long enough that regulars book the same table year after year and the staff already know what they want. It's a formal Cantonese restaurant tucked into a lane off Chinatown, white-tablecloth serious, where the roast duck is carved tableside and the service runs like the dining room has something to prove. The Australian Good Food Guide awards it two Chef Hats, and the room's quiet confidence suggests it has never needed to mention that.

Charcoal grilling and tempura in the same omakase menu sounds like a contradiction until you sit at the counter and watch the chef make it feel inevitable. Haco is a compact Japanese fine dining room in the Sydney CBD, built around a single tasting progression you watch unfold in front of you. The name means theatre in Japanese, which the room leans into without apology. It holds two Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide.

Modern British cooking in tropical Far North Queensland sounds like a concept that shouldn't work, yet here it is, pulling two Australian Good Food Guide Chef Hats. The menu leans on classical technique while letting the surrounding reef-and-rainforest produce do the talking. It's a proper sit-down restaurant, unhurried and polished, the kind where the beverage list gets as much attention as the kitchen. Port Douglas's special-occasion default for anyone who knows the town.

Set in a heritage winery homestead on the northern outskirts of Perth, Harry's is a French restaurant run by two brothers whose parents' artwork lines the walls. The chef came up under Michel Roux Snr at the Waterside Inn, and classical technique is the whole point here: this is the kind of room where you slow down, and the pacing makes that easy. The Australian Good Food Guide awards it Two Chef Hats.

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.

A one-off sculptural chandelier, locally made and named for light, anchors the room at this all-day European restaurant on North Terrace. The Art Nouveau bones give it genuine atmosphere, and the kitchen leans on regional producers to do the talking. It runs from morning coffee through cocktails at dusk, so the crowd shifts considerably depending on when you arrive. The Australian Good Food Guide has given 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.

A boutique family-run Italian restaurant tucked among the eucalypts of the NSW South Coast, well away from anything you'd call a dining district. The chef's roots are in Piedmont, but his cooking has picked up detours through Singapore and the local coastal produce along the way. Three courses, a thoughtful wine list leaning organic and biodynamic, and a setting that earns its two Australian Good Food Guide Chef Hats without anyone needing to remind you.

The French wine list runs deep enough that you could spend the whole meal just reading it, which sets the tone for a French fine dining room that takes the classics seriously. The chef trained under Michelin kitchens, and the cooking shows it, seasonal and precise without tipping into the self-conscious. Bowen Hills is a quiet address for somewhere this polished, but regulars seem to prefer it that way.

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.

Yes, it's inside a Lexus showroom, and no, that's not the strangest part. Omotenashi is a ten-seat kaiseki restaurant in the heart of Hobart's CBD where multi-course Japanese tradition plays out in a room that smells faintly of new car ambition. The set menu holds the wheel, and the kitchen leans on Tasmanian produce to do its Japanese artistry. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded 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.

Pale wood, glossy tiles, and floor-to-ceiling glass set the scene at this modern Japanese restaurant on Bunda Street. The kitchen runs a robata grill alongside composed plates that lean heavily on yuzu, miso, and Japanese seasoning traditions applied to local produce. The Australian Good Food Guide awarded it Two Chef Hats. Canberra's dining scene gets underestimated often enough that a room this sharp-looking still catches people off guard.

The seafood on your plate was swimming off this island's shore a few hours earlier, which sets the tone for the whole experience. Samphire is the fine-dining restaurant at this private island retreat on the Eyre Peninsula, where Mediterranean flavors meet foraged coastal ingredients in a room of rattan chairs and polished concrete. The Australian Good Food Guide awards it two Chef Hats, and it earns them quietly, without fuss.

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.

A plant-only Sichuan restaurant in an industrial Collingwood space, Shu has been quietly dismantling the assumption that vegan dining means polite and beige. The kitchen leans into the bold, numbing heat of southwest Chinese cooking, and the ten-course degustation does the convincing. There's also a cocktail bar tucked inside, which helps explain the crowd's relaxed commitment to staying a while. The Australian Good Food Guide gives it two Chef Hats.

Station Road is a dressy, grown-up restaurant on the first floor of Festival Tower, with a polished marble bar, a wine cellar on proud display, and terrace seating for anyone who likes their lunch with a view of Adelaide. The kitchen plays it French, leaning on local produce, and finishes with a Paris-Brest and a cheese trolley, so skipping dessert here would be a bold act of self-restraint. It's listed in the Michelin Guide.

Neon signs, Japanese-style murals, and wooden furniture set the tone at this share-plates Asian restaurant on Weyba Road, where the room feels like a group project between four very opinionated friends. The cooking pulls across Southeast and East Asia without apology, landing somewhere between playful and serious, which is roughly the same place the cocktail list sits. An Australian Good Food Guide Two Chef Hat spot that doesn't feel like one, in the best, most accidental way.

Sixteen seats, a cave-dark room of blackened steel and raw timber, and a Korean omakase menu that changes with the seasons. SUUM is the kind of quiet, focused dining room where you arrive, accept a glass of housemade makgeolli with a snack, and hand the evening over to the kitchen. The two Chef Hat tasting menu runs a dozen or so courses, rooted in Korean tradition and clearly comfortable straying from it.

Vineyard views through the dining room windows mean you're watching what's on your plate grow a few hundred metres away. This is a formal, sit-down restaurant on the Mornington Peninsula doing European-leaning seasonal cooking with a two Chef Hat nod from the Australian Good Food Guide. The wine list leans heavily into the estate's own bottles, which is either charming or convenient depending on how you feel about that sort of thing.

White tablecloths and rattan chairs look out over the Sunshine Coast Hinterland from the terrace of this fine dining room tucked into the hills above Montville. The kitchen leans French, drawing on local produce to run a seasonally shifting menu, and the pacing is deliberately unhurried. The Australian Good Food Guide has given it two Chef Hats, and the drive up the escarpment is half the point.

A stone fireplace anchors the dining room while the Great Dividing Range fills the windows, which is a reasonable way to set expectations for a meal. This is a fine dining restaurant inside a mountain lodge, running a contemporary Australian menu that leans on regional produce and native flavours. The Australian Good Food Guide has given it Two Chef Hats. At over 1,100 metres up, the terrace sunsets arrive uninvited and stay too long.

An open timber pavilion set in the rainforest above Maleny, with the kitchen running Thai-rooted contemporary Asian cuisine and a degustation menu for anyone who wants the full tour. The food trades in the kind of sweet, sour, and spicy balancing act that looks simple and isn't. Two Chef Hats from the Australian Good Food Guide. The retreat around it is lovely, but the restaurant is the reason to book.

A restored heritage house on the Tweed River, with pressed tin ceilings, palm fans, and a verandah that looks straight out at Wollumbin. This is a plantation-style bistro running a proper Modern Australian menu, the kind of place where lunch can quietly become afternoon. The Australian Good Food Guide gave it two Chef Hats. Come on a weekend when the lawn bar is open and the cane fields are green, and the pacing feels less like a meal than a small argument for slowing down.

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.

The open grill is the room's focal point, its smoke threading through exposed brick and vintage clutter to announce that this is an Argentine asado restaurant, not a steakhouse cosplaying as one. Surry Hills regulars fill the long tables for dry-aged beef cooked over fire with patience rather than theatre, and a wine list that runs Buenos Aires and Barossa in easy company. It placed 36th on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

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.