The 100 Best Places 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.

Turquoise water meeting white sand at the edge of nowhere, Wharton Beach sits in the Duke of Orleans Bay area of Western Australia's southern coast, remote enough that even on a flawless summer day you may have the whole stretch to yourself. Dolphins work the break while surfers do the same. It ranked third on the World's 50 Best Beaches list in 2026, which should tell you something about the drive.

Jacketed bartenders with accents spanning small Slovakian towns to big Italian cities set the tone at this cocktail bar in The Rocks. The hospitality runs flamboyant, the kind where staff practically compete for your affection and the host seats everyone like a penthouse guest. Named one of the World's 50 Best Bars, Maybe Sammy drinks from a European hotel-bar playbook that Sydney had no idea it was missing.

A drift snorkel off a desert beach where the current does the work, carrying you along the Ningaloo Reef while fish go about their day around you. Turquoise Bay sits inside Cape Range National Park with no development in sight, scrubland meeting white sand meeting that genuinely improbable water color. Ranked fifteenth on the World's 50 Best Beaches list, it draws fewer visitors than the name deserves, which is the whole point of coming this far.

The Hill of Grace vineyard was planted by a Silesian settler over 150 years ago, named for the Lutheran church peering down at its twisted old vines. This Eden Valley winery has been in the same family for six generations, and tastings are personally hosted by them, portraits of ancestors watching from the walls. Henschke holds a spot on the World's 50 Best Vineyards list, which feels about right for a place still farming the ground its great-great-grandparents cleared.

Andrew McConnell's fine dining room inside the grand Cavendish House on Russell Street turns on an open fire grill and dry-aged Victorian and South Australian beef, which landed Gimlet a spot on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list. The room manages to feel glamorous without feeling stiff, and the wine list reads like someone actually thought about what goes with the food rather than just buying everything.

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.

An extensive vinyl collection spins through a high-end sound system, and the whole bar is arranged around taking that seriously, kissa-style, the way listening bars in Japan are. ANTE is a drinks-forward spot in Newtown where the sake list runs deep, with producer notes detailed enough to actually teach you something. It rewards a slow, curious approach to the menu rather than a quick round, which is either a warning or a recommendation depending on your Thursday night.

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.

Tucked into a Melbourne shopping complex in a way that makes passersby do a double-take, Byrdi is a cocktail bar built around seasonality and local ingredients handled with the kind of precision that blurs the line between bar and kitchen lab. The team behind Singapore's Operation Dagger runs the show, and the drinks follow an almost culinary logic. It landed on the World's 50 Best Bars list, which tells you the curious head-twist is worth acting on.

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.

Neil Perry's wood-fired grill restaurant in Double Bay sits at number two on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which is about as specific an endorsement as the universe offers. The open kitchen keeps the focus on dry-aged beef and whatever came off a boat that morning, and the room follows the same logic: nothing is there to impress you, which is exactly why it does. Australian producers run the whole show, pasture to coast.

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.

Every morning the menu is written from scratch based on what came in and how the fire is burning, because Firedoor runs on Australian hardwoods alone, no gas, no electricity. Lennox Hastie's Surry Hills restaurant is a serious, sit-down affair where the open kitchen keeps the work visible and the point is restraint, not theatre. It sits at number eleven on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which tells you something about the aged ribeye.

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.

Champagne sabrage lessons are on the curriculum at this quietly chic Fitzroy wine bar, which says something about the crowd's commitment. The wine list is the real point, organized by style and leaning into macerated whites, orange wines, and chilled reds alongside the expected classics. The cocktail list is small and a little kooky, which is exactly right. Everything, down to the coffee beans, is sourced with the kind of care that borders on obsessive.

A wagyu-focused fine dining room in South Yarra where the menu is essentially a graduate seminar on breed, marbling, and provenance. Australian and Japanese A5 cuts are aged in-house and cooked over a hibachi grill, served simply enough that the beef does the arguing. The room is warm and understated, the sommelier knows when to stop talking, and the service hits that rare register of polished without stiff. Ranked 29th on the World's 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.

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.

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 in-house dry-ageing room in an old industrial space in Marrickville sets the tone for what this open-fire steakhouse is about: Australian beef handled with patience, then finished over live flame with more discipline than drama. The room keeps the building's bones exposed, the service keeps the formality in its pocket, and the whole place carries the quiet confidence of somewhere that doesn't need to explain itself. It landed at number 59 on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list.

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.

A beautifully restored heritage building in the CBD sets the stage: high ceilings, original detailing, and a terrace that opens toward the skyline. Shell House is a contemporary steakhouse where the kitchen dry-ages Australian beef before it meets an open fire grill, with the wider menu showing the same restraint. It landed at number 85 on the World's Best Steak Restaurants list, which should tell you roughly what the room expects of you, dress-wise.

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.

A small Japanese restaurant in the spa-country town of Daylesford, Kadota runs kaiseki-style set menus built around whatever the surrounding region is producing right now. The team applies traditional technique to local seasonal ingredients with the kind of quiet discipline that doesn't need to announce itself. The Australian Good Food Guide awards it four chef hats. Book well ahead; this is not a walk-in situation.

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.

Twelve seats at a glossy wooden counter, and every one of them faces Koichi Minamishima like front row at a recital. This is an omakase sushi restaurant in a Richmond backstreet that has no interest in announcing itself. The chef trained through Japan's rigid kitchen hierarchy before bringing his shokunin philosophy, that relentless pursuit of craft, south. The room is quiet and focused in the way that tends to make people lower their voices without being asked.

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 bar built around a bottling operation is an unusual anchor, but PS40 commits: the house sodas, made from local ingredients with no preservatives, drive the whole menu. The bush tonic alone runs through Peruvian cinchona bark, lemon myrtle, and native lemongrass. Cocktails pair those sodas with equally niche spirits, and the list reads like a festival lineup. Find the entrance down Skittle Lane, which feels about right.

Single O has coffee on self-serve tap, which sounds gimmicky until you're pulling a single origin at the brew bar and reconsidering everything. This Surry Hills cafe supplies beans to a significant slice of Sydney's restaurant scene, so there's a decent chance you've already had their coffee without knowing it. The banana bread comes with espresso butter, which is either the logical conclusion of brunch culture or its apotheosis, depending on your mood.

A mezcal cocktail bar wedged into a Council Place garage so small it might have previously housed a single hatchback. Cantina OK is the opposite of Sydney's big-shoulder waterfront bars, the ones that eye your footwear suspiciously. Sandals, cowboy hats, and ball gowns all get waved through here, and the agave list runs deep enough that you'll stop pretending you know what you want and just ask.