When you’re an editor of The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide, there are two questions you receive more than most people. “Can you get me a window table at Quay?” and “what’s your favourite restaurant?”

Firstly, most tables are by the window at Quay after its $4 million renovation five years ago. Secondly, no.

The Good Food Guide’s first editor, Leo Schofield, said it best in a Good Weekend feature published in 1985. “I don’t have a favourite restaurant. Restaurants are like clothes. You wear what feels right on the day.” More and more, this notion has informed the venues we choose to feature in the guide, which this year includes more than 500 reviews, from fine diners in the CBD to a Tenterfield wine bar and a Penrith pub.

It also permeates our list of Good Food Guide 2025 finalists for the three biggest awards – a restaurant in a Marrickville warehouse is just as vital to Sydney as a three-hatter on the harbour. You can also consider the following list as a cheat-sheet to the most exciting places to eat in Sydney and NSW right now.

There are modern classic restaurants at the top of their game, the most creative, precise and innovative chefs, and newcomers bringing fresh and thrilling ideas to the table.

Vittoria Coffee restaurant of the year finalists

Baba’s Place, Marrickville

Behind a garage door, nestled between breweries and poultry wholesalers, is this cosy converted-warehouse restaurant that delivers a mash-up of cuisines. Fringed lamps, Persian rugs and lace-covered tables take cues from the homes of the co-owners’ Lebanese, Macedonian and Greek families, while the food melds cultures and skews tradition.

20 Sloane Street, Marrickville, babasplace.com.au

Bathers Pavilion, Balmoral

New-ish chef Aaron Ward brings a fresh breath of creativity to Bathers’heritage digs, these days decked out with bright art and orchids and blue-and-white stripes. It’s exactly where you want to snack on impressively crunchy potato scallops seasoned with powdered seaweed and vinegar, or push the boat out with Barolo and a rib-eye sparked up by biquinho peppers.

4 The Esplanade, Mosman, batherspavilion.com.au

Ester, Chippendale

Chef Mat Lindsay opened Ester in 2013, and it’s been a bolthole of invigorating dishes since, each one touched by a wood-fired oven that specialises in coaxing novel flavours from familiar ingredients. New hits on the Chippendale block include pork belly glazed with burnt honey and set in husk of roasted leek with macadamia cream, and duck dumplings braised in a broth that speaks of smoke, fish bones, pepper and tamari.

46-52 Meagher Street, Chippendale, ester-restaurant.com.au

Saint Peter, Paddington

Chef Josh Niland and his wife, Julie, relaunched Australia’s most famous fish restaurant on a Paddington backstreet in August, and the new joint is really something. Lunch is an a la carte offering of seafood caught by the best fishers in the country; dinner is one of the most singular tasting menus in this or any other world.

161 Underwood Street, Paddington, saintpeter.com.au

Quay, The Rocks

The harbour. The soft jazz. The far-reaching cellar. The watchful waiters that never leave a water glass half-empty. Quay remains Sydney’s flagship fine-dining experience, from the seaweed tart filled with whipped creme fraiche and briny caviar to the stunning White Coral dessert.

Upper Level Overseas Passenger Terminal, The Rocks, quay.com.au

Oceania Cruises chef of the year

Ewen Crawford and Danni Wilson, Bistro Livi, Murwillumbah

Few restaurants have the level of warm, engaged service as Livi, and no one cooks a more comforting goat in milk and marsala than Ewen Crawford and Danni Wilson. A Spanish thread weaves through the menu – paprika-tinge octopus, top-tier Iberian ham – but inspiration comes from anywhere often enhancing local produces, such as Ballina pipis thumping with house-made XO, and Pottsville spanner crab in a silky omelette.

Cnr Brisbane Street and Proudfoots Lane, Murwillumbah, bistrolivi.com

Aaron Ward, Bathers’ Pavilion Restaurant, Balmoral

By the time Bathers’ cheese trolley rolls up and the setting sun turns the harbour a deep, satin blue, you may find yourself leaning back with a glass of Mount Mary thinking “well, this is as good as it gets”. The Bruny Island cheese selection is as good as it gets too, bridging Aaron Ward’s lamb loin and spinach rolled in buttery lamb belly, and koshihikari rice custard crowned with reduced-milk ice-cream.

4 The Esplanade, Mosman, batherspavilion.com.au

Daeun Kang, Oborozuki, Circular Quay

At this cathedral-ceilinged restaurant at the ferry end of Circular Quay, Daeun Kang’s cooking is elegant, refined and delicately luxurious. Chawanmushi is topped with toasty scallops, sea urchin and Jerusalem artichoke chips, and bathed in scallop consomme. O’Connor beef tartare is long flavoured and rich, and Maremma duck is a bona fide star, brushed with red wine and maltose, then roasted, rested, carved and grilled.

Level 3, 71 Macquarie Street, Sydney, oborozuki.com.au

Paul Farag, Aalia, Sydney

Paul Farag refines and redefines family favourites and street food staplesof Egypt, Lebanon, Iran and Turkey until they are reborn as rich and elegant banquet dishes. And we mean rich. Soft pillows of bone marrow glisten in ful medames (fava beans), tamarind oil pools around a spectacular barbecued prawn and Moreton Bay bug swims in plumped-up orzo with chicken fat.

Shop 7.07-7.08, 25 Martin Place, Sydney, aaliarestaurant.com

Peter Gilmore, Quay, The Rocks

For more than two decades at the helm of Quay’s kitchen (not to mention Bennelong since 2015), Peter Gilmore has been a master of restrained plating and studies in texture. Lately, tapioca has been thickened with confit egg yolk and sea urchin butter to enhance the crisp flavour of marron, while bone marrow enriches the dough for cavatelli pasta – a canvas for sweet mud crab, koji butter, and purple-on-white “pin-striped” peanuts.

Upper Level Overseas Passenger Terminal, The Rocks, quay.com.au

New restaurant of the year presented by Aurum Poultry Co.

Allta, Sydney

Offering a four-hour tasting menu of “elevated Korean gastronomy” is Sydney’s most expensive new restaurant. How expensive? Try $325 per guest. But it’s also one of the most singular and fun. A former executive chef at acclaimed Seoul fine-diner Jungsik, Jung-Su Chang leads an open kitchen where pounded scampi is stretched across pickled capsicum with wild perilla-seed oil and an ornate puck of ginseng and white-chocolate mousse is doused in tart apple consomme.

50 Pitt Street, Sydney, alltasydney.com.au

Ammos Brighton, Brighton-Le-Sands

What does it feel like when one of Australia’s most prolific and enduring Greek chefs opens a large, sunny restaurant in a Novotel hotel overlooking sparkling blue waters? It feels like a homecoming, with Ammos the perfect platform for Peter Conistis’ effortless take on Grecian favourites. The room has the perfect aspect for the easy, breezy menu, executed by James Roberts – and that’s even before you spy the cabanas by the pool.

Level 3, 2 Princess Street, Brighton-Le-Sands, ammosrestaurant.com.au

Firepop, Enmore

Talk about a slow burn. Raymond Hou and Alina Van launched Firepop pop-ups from their go-anywhere food stall five years ago before moving to this brick-and-mortar Enmore site in 2024. They call their yakitori-style skewers “inner west cuisine” and coals are at the heart of the kitchen, with almost everything touched by flame or smoke.

137 Enmore Road, Enmore, firepop.com.au

King Clarence, Sydney

When Bentley Group restaurateurs Brent Savage and Nick Hildebrandt needed a talent to lead the kitchen of their new Asian-inspired restaurant, Khanh Nguyen was first on the list, and with good reason: the former executive chef of Melbourne’s Sunda and Aru can damn well cook. A mapo tofu remix teeming with hunks of royal red prawn, smoked marrow and chewy tteokbokki. Phwoar. Each dish builds on what came before it to create something genuinely new.

171 Clarence Street, Sydney, bentleyrestaurantgroup.com.au

Song Bird, Double Bay

The 1960s heritage Gaden House is born again as Neil Perry’s three-storey Cantonese banquet house, with rippled cedar walls, marble counters and graceful songbird motifs. A menu stacked with fine Perry-sourced produce dances from Spencer Gulf prawn dumplings to mud crab from the tanks, and the Peking duck is so glossy it looks French-polished.

24 Bay Street, Double Bay,themargaretfamily.com/venue/songbird

The winners of The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2025 Awards will be announced on November 11, presented by Vittoria Coffee and Oceania Cruises. The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2025 will be on sale from November 12.