Melody Reynauld

Take your stomach on tour of the best Taiwanese, Japanese, Thai and Chinese desserts in Sydney, from sticky, two-bite rice cakes to elaborate waffle sundaes. Want more sugar-fuelled goodness? Check out are guide to the best sweet treats in Sydney. On a budget? Work your way through our list of the 50 best cheap eats in Sydney. RECOMMENDED: The 50 best restaurants in Sydney.

Chef Leigh McDivitt and Clayton Ries say goodbye to Banksia Bistro (helmed by Colin Fassnidge) to take on the completely renovated Macquarie Hotel in Liverpool. You'll spy pub food staples served alongside some wacky desserts, including Jack Daniels and bacon flavoured ice cream, which you can have while chilling in the beer garden that has been landscaped and made home to a Japanese Maple. The hotel is touting the perfect balance between casual and high quality.

While the hype around Pokémon Go has died down, fans of Down N’ Out are still going strong after the brand became famous for their Pikachu and Bulbasaur burgers. What started as a pop-up store in the CBD has now paved the way for a fixed location in Top Ryde with enough room for them to, finally, serve milkshakes. Keep your eyes peeled for essential thickshake flavours such as Oreo and salted caramel. You will now have something to cool your tongue down after ordering a side of their very own Death Sauce, made from crazy-hot chillies. Other than bigger capacity, the new location won’t be drastically different. You’ll still be able to get the four regulars on the menu and their weekly specials that can barely fit in a human mouth. The comic book decor remains a staple and the mood lighting is a hint of better things to come; Down N’ Out are super close to getting their liquor licence.  

If The Martian has taught us anything, it's that you can survive on a diet entirely consisting of potatoes and nothing else. You can certainly test the theory with baby steps, dedicating your Friday to the humble spud thanks to the Storehouse on the Park's 'Fries-Day' menu. We're talking a 12 versions of fries, separated into three menus available on consecutive Fridays. Best part? Each one is eight bucks a serve. Each menu kicks off with Storehouse's fries with curry sauce before branching off into polenta chips, fried with rosemary and served with chive créme fraiche; zucchini chips with chipotle aioli; and waffle fries you can dip in Cajun barbecue sauce on week one. Week two will get you sweet potato fries that you can offset with a spicy aioli that has harissa mixed into it; haloumi chips with salsa verde; and the classic combo of potato wedges with sweet chilli sauce and sour cream. On week three, you'll find thick-cut chips covered in dried nori and served with yuzu aioli; eggplant chips and romesco, a sauce made from nuts and red peppers; and curly fries with tomato aioli. Storehouse on the Park is located at Vibe Hotel, 100 Bayswater Rd, Rushcutters Bay 2011. Daily 11.30am-10pm.  For more menus that won't break your bank, check out our list of the best cheap eats in Sydney.

There’s a 30-day zero waste challenge going around that entails things like saying no to straws, reusing water bottles, composting, and switching from a plastic toothbrush to a bamboo one. If you’re not ready to give up all your creature comforts but you still want to cut down on your household waste, book tickets to a dinner party that start-up Love Waste Collective and boutique caterers Dan the Man are hosting on October 18. The partnership is setting an example of what a zero waste event could look like, with leftover food being turned into canapés, napkins replaced by hankies, and compostable cutlery that will be sent along with green waste to Rose Bay Community Gardens. The function will be held at the Easts Rugby Club in Rose Bay. Dinner will be served from 6pm, featuring nine dishes each centred on different cuts of a whole lamb with seasonal sides. It costs $50pp and the ticket will also get you a drink on arrival and entry to the launch party that will take place from 7.30pm onwards. The launch party is where you’ll be able to bring any leftovers from dinner (or from home) and watch chef Madita Kosch turn them into tasty canapes that you can bring along with you to interactive workshops on food waste (including some food art), guest speeches, and a tour of the local community garden. Entry to the launch party without dinner costs $20 and you can purchase tickets here. There’ll even be bones provided for any canine plus-ones. Food waste is an issue that people in the

The restaurant is called Chula and it’s about to become your go-to spot when you’ve got the hankering for some tostadas. What used to be Hugo’s Pizza has turned into an eatery celebrating the more traditional roots of regional Mexican cuisine, helmed by couple Nicole Galloway and Peter Lew who own the tequila bar Barrio Cellar in Martin Place. It's a return home for the couple, who used to run Barrio Chino across the street (it's now Mug Life). Motivated by their extensive travels all over Mexico, Galloway and Lew are serving up tostadas with an emphasis on seafood and vegetables; aguachile (Mexican shrimp cocktail); whole charcoal fish; and ceviche. And to ensure this is the real deal they're bringing a chef over from Mexico City to helm the kitchen. In homage to the pizzeria that was previously on site, the menu is also offering tlayuda, a staple dish from the Mexican city Oaxaca. Reminiscent of a pizza at first glance, a tortilla base is fried or toasted and spread with refried beans and asiento (unrefined pork lard). Toppings usually include lettuce or cabbage, avocado (duh), some sort of meat, cheese and salsa.  Photograph: supplied At the bar, you’ll be able to nab fruity flavoured cocktails that will soothe the tongue after all the hot sauce. It's a safe bet that the focus will be on agave spirits thanks to bartender Reece Griffith, founder of The Agave Cartel. Prepare yourself for tequila and mezcal any way you can imagine. ‘Chula’ is slang for both ‘beautiful’ and

‘Restaurant’ doesn’t come close to covering what has opened up at the Cabra-Vale Diggers club in Canley Vale – we’re having a hard time fitting this category-defying venue into a single box. District 8 is a gigantic 600-seater dining hall that is divided into eight sections. Imagine an indoor Spice Alley in Sydney’s west. It’s designed to transport you far away, with faux Hong Kong-style street signs and string lights guiding the way to the flavours of Vietnam, Thailand, China, Laos and Cambodia. To start things off, there’s a dumplings station serving xiao long bao, fried pork buns. Then you can cruise between outlets dishing up preserved egg with pulled pork congee, ramen, pho, char kway teow, tom yum soup, pad thai, Penang prawn noodle soup, Malaysian seafood laksa, roasted pork belly, roasted Cantonese duck, jellyfish salad, slow poached Hainan chicken rice, roti paratha, beef massaman curry, satay skewers, broken rice, salt crusted barramundi, and Thai papaya salad. If that doesn’t read like a list of all your favourite things then we don’t know what will. There’s also a salad station for fresh accompaniments and a juice bar serving fresh sugarcane juice and bubble tea. Photograph: supplied For that sweet tooth, look no further than the station dedicated entirely to Southeast Asian desserts. Plus you can get a drink at the bar while your kids entertain themselves in the shiny new playground. The project is part of the Cabra-Vale Diggers food-focused renovation, with a

Wine may get better with age but time does you no favours when you’ve got dust powdering that bottle of gin you never remember to open. But now you’ve finally got an excuse to bow out of a wallet-hammering session at a cocktail bar and have a few at home. The Mixery is a new delivery service jumping on the subscription box bandwagon. They offer three cocktail recipes a month (all ingredients included, but not the booze). The goodies get delivered right to your doorstep every month with enough to make twelve cocktails (four of each), which is the perfect amount for you and your best mates. This is a total vibe if your weird cousin gives you a bottle of something for your birthday each year that you never drink, or for that vodka someone left after a party. This way, the $50 price on the ingredients means that your cocktails average out at about four bucks a pop. Bargain! Plus, if you’re a bit picky about your spirits you get to choose your poison rather than have someone else’s idea of a good gin foisted on you. Each month’s offering will centre around a different type of alcohol. This month’s star is gin, with three recipes playing out the transition of winter to spring. Of course, no cocktail is a cocktail until it is given a witty name. You’ll find the zest of bergamot in ‘Earl the Grey’ to spice up the last few chilly nights, some basil notes in the green-tinged ‘Basilisk,’ and an ode to spring in the floral ‘Rosed Up.’ “Florals? For spring?” says Miranda Priestly. “Groun

Spring had sprung and there's another good reason to be excited about September – sous chefs from some of Sydney’s top restaurants will be taking charge of the kitchen, designing their own five-course degustation menus for a new dinner series called Sunday Sous Sessions. The sessions will be held at the old Marque site on Crown Street in Surry Hills every Sunday in September and each week will feature a new sous chef and a new menu for 50 lucky guests. The best part? Paired drinks! That’s right, the $165 ticket price includes matched beverages making this a way more affordable dining experience than many Sydney degustations. The first chef taking to the burners will be Andy Ashby, sous chef at Nel. in Surry Hills, led by UK celebrity chef Nelly Robinson. He will be followed by Khanh Nguyen from Cirrus on Sunday September 10; next up will see Sam Young (formerly of Ms. G’s and now Fratelli Paradiso) on Sunday September 17; and Alex Farrow of North Bondi Fish will cap off the series on Sunday September 24.  These dinners comes with a sprinkle of good karma as a portion of the $165 fee will be donated to R U OK?, the official charity partner of Sunday Sous Sessions. Chef Jeremy Strode was an ambassador for R U OK? and his tragic passing in July this year has left a big hole in the hospitality community, so these events will hit close to home for a lot of people. Book tickets to the Sunday Sous Sessions here. If you need to talk, you can contact Lifeline on 13 11 14 for crisis su

African cuisine isn’t super common in the Australian dining scene, but the food that South African-born Duncan Welgemoed is cooking at his lauded Adelaide eatery, Africola, is legendary – it’s one of those restaurants that make you consider booking a flight just for dinner. The super buzzy restaurant does South African barbecue with the addition of North African flavours like pickled vegetables and hummus and roasted lamb. The meat is made from animals bred and raised exclusively for the restaurant and all its produce is sourced from local SA farmers. And now Welgemoed is saving you a flight by bringing his mod-African dining experience to Sydney for Good Food Month, where he will be throwing a snack party called Africola Sound System. It’s not the full sit-down experience, but rather a cocktail party that will marry contemporary African cuisine and Western bangers into one big ole party. Welgemoed will be smoking and basting all sorts of delicious cuts for the evening, and we’re hoping he’ll bring over his secret hot sauce served in vintage Coke bottles. Africola Sound System will be held on Saturday, October 7 at 6.30pm and tickets are $100 each, which you can purchase here. It may seem a little pricey but it’s a lot cheaper than flights to South Australia. If you can’t make it, there’s plenty of other festive eats on the Good Food Month line-up. This year the festival runs from October 5-22, and you’d best believe the Night Noodle Markets are back. 40 stalls will be set u

Everyone has thrown away their paper coffee cup in a yellow bin at some point in their lives. But the very thing that makes them able to hold our precious coffee without dissolving like newspaper in the rain is what makes them unable to be recycled. This week, Toby’s Estate in Chippendale is providing takeaway cups that are both easy to recycle and waterproof as part of a trial to reduce the impact of waste.The RecycleMe cup does away with that pesky plastic lining that causes a billion cups to end up in landfill each year. Instead, they utilise a mineral-based lining that is easy to remove during the recycling process. This makes 96 per cent of the cup recyclable, able to be turned into paperback covers and other paper and cardboard products. So the next time you look in your bag and realise you left your Keep Cup in the dishwasher (again), you can grab a RecycleMe cup and still be doing your bit for the environment.The RecycleMe cup trial is also happening at participating cafes in Adelaide, Hobart and Melbourne. Blue bins will be available at Toby’s Estate and other locations for the empty cups and lids, which will be baled up and taken to a paper recycling facility so that we can start paying back Mother Nature for all the coffee she’s gifted us.RecycleMe cups will be available from Toby’s Estate Chippendale, from Monday Aug 14 until Sunday Aug 20.In the city this week? Check out the best coffee in the Sydney CBD.

Everyone has thrown away their paper coffee cup in a yellow bin at some point in their lives. But the very thing that makes them able to hold our precious coffee without dissolving like newspaper in the rain is what makes them unable to be recycled. This week, the café at the Melbourne Museum is providing takeaway cups that are both easy to recycle and waterproof as part of a trial to reduce the impact of waste. The RecycleMe cup does away with that pesky plastic lining that causes a billion cups to end up in landfill each year. Instead, they utilise a mineral-based lining that is easy to remove during the recycling process. This makes 96% of the cup recyclable, able to be turned into paperback covers and other paper and cardboard products. So the next time you look in your bag and realise you left your Keep Cup in the dishwasher (again), you can grab a RecycleMe cup and still be doing your bit for the environment. The RecycleMe cup trial is also happening at participating cafes in Adelaide, Hobart and Sydney. Blue bins will be available at each location for the empty cups and lids, which will be baled up and taken to a paper recycling facility so that we can start paying back Mother Nature for all the coffee she’s gifted us. RecycleMe cups will be available from Melbourne Museum, from Monday Aug 14 until Sunday Aug 20. Need something filling and hot? Try the best soups in Melbourne.

There's a café-by-day, bar-by-night in Neutral Bay that is joining the frontline on the War on Waste by getting rid of disposable cups from today, August 1. They’re calling it the Mug Movement and are claiming it’s the first of its kind in Sydney. It's certainly a serious step towards a more sustainable Sydney, which we can all get behind. Most people (us included) thought paper cups could be recycled before the ABC special busted that myth wide open – because of their plastic lining, it’s estimated that 3 billion of these cups end up in the landfill every year. Tonic Lane offers incentives like two stamps on your loyalty card for bringing your own mug so that you can get to that free cup at twice the rate. But if you're not in the habit yet of packing your Keep Cup in your bag each day they also have a shelf of free mugs for the taking, no returns required; reusable coffee cups for purchase; and Biocups at the ready for an extra 50 cents if you really need to grab and go. These cups have a plant-based lining that is biodegradable, and 25 cents go towards Clean Up Australia so, don’t worry, you’ll still be doing your part for the environment. For that guilt-free cup of Joe, you can find Tonic Lane at: Shop 6, 8 Young Lane, Neutral Bay NSW 2088. Need a caffeine fix ASAP? Check out the best coffee in the Sydney CBD.