Time Out Food & Drink Awards 2022: Best Fine Dining Restaurant

We know that the world of fine dining has a notorious reputation for miserly, baby-sized portions that leave you in need of a Macca's run on the way home. And there are elements of dishes at Bennelong – the longstanding restaurant in resident inside the famous Opera House sails – that toe the line of that sterotype. However, where delicate featherweight portions may dwell, a full-on uppercut of flavour and depth leave any thoughts of hunger KO'd. 

For the team at the Blue Door, it’s all about giving back more than they’ve taken. The ambitious and innovative 24-seat restaurant on Waterloo Street places sustainability on the same rung as deliciousness, and Cashman is as exacting in his ethics as he is in his execution. From the heritage wheat sourced from the tiny 400-person town of North Star, on the Queensland and New South Wales border – where employees and shareholders must be residents – to sourcing fish from Australia’s only regenerative wild Murray cod population in the Riverina, these guys talk the talk and walk the walk.

Apple, peach, cherry and grapefruit might sound like a list of ingredients, but they’re not what you’re eating, but how you’re eating. Specifically, they are the woods that are feeding the charcoal oven, grill and hearths on which everything is cooked at this fire-powered Surry Hills restaurant. Watching glowing coals go from furnace to grill; seeing chefs cooking by touch not timer; and the smell of smoke in the air coalesce into an intoxicating evening that aesthetically is very Surry Hills, but carries a sense of rugged outdoorsiness and a nostalgia for a simpler time when fire really was all you needed.

Dinner at this famed French bistro is akin to immersive theatre. There are some venues that have a theme, and then there are venues that live a theme. Hubert is the most thoroughly realised venue in Sydney. When you’re sitting down here, among the red velvet, chestnut timber, polished brass, and what we would guestimate is tens of thousands of dollars of vintage posters and prints in frames, you may as well have landed in Oz, or Pleasantville. Political storms and economic maneuvering may rage overhead in the CBD’s financial district, but down here you’ll always have a piece of Paris, with steak, jazz and wine. Here’s looking at you, Hubert.

This Italian-ish up-market osteria heroing seasonal seafood with low-waste principles is the jewel in the crown of Hinchcliff House, the multilevel hospo hub in the heart of Quay Quarter. The interiors offer a masterclass in the power of subtle design and judicious lighting. Exposed beams and raw brickwork speak to the building’s 19th-century heritage, while slender wall sconces and carefully placed downlights offer pools of light amidst the moody shadows between tables. The focal point of the room is a sprawling bar clad in dusky pink marble, gently backlit to draw your gaze, while on the opposite wall, the open kitchens add a disarming undercurrent of action and informality to the vibe. It’s an achingly chic yet cosy ambiance; unmistakably luxe but without bragging about it. The service follows suit, with immaculately presented front-of-house staff that are friendly and navigate through tables that love to chat or those that would prefer to keep talk to a minimum.

This is a brazen fine-dining restaurant, one that willfully celebrates luxury and believes in giving you what you pay for. The sort of place where a palate-cleansing dessert isn’t a puny scoop of sorbet, but a hollowed half mango filled with heavily whipped cream, finger lime pearls, cardamom granita and then sealed with scored mango sorbet. The sort of place that doesn’t think twice about following that with another heavy-handed helping of cream, this time smoothed over buffalo’s milk gelato dressed with coffee caramel. On a warm summer night, you’ll LuMi's doors flung open, and the irony isn’t lost. It's a fitting metaphor for a technically faultless dining experience with no constraints, one of the city’s very best, where the only rule seems to be that there aren’t any.

In July of 2020, at the age of 63, Neil Perry announced he was retiring, after roughly 40 years in the game. For many, the news that one of Modern Australian cuisine’s founding fathers was stepping back from his role as culinary director of Rockpool Dining Group – a restaurant empire that encompassed 80-odd establishments across the country – came as something of a shock. But some people, it seems, just can’t stay away for too long. Perry and his signature ponytail are back in the kitchen at his latest (and reportedly final) venture, Margaret. It is his first venue to date without any financial partners and, in many ways, his most personal project yet.

‘Our whole menu is full of questions,’ says Saint Peter chef and co-owner Josh Niland. And he’s not wrong. When you sit down at the beautiful marble-topped counter that runs the length of this Paddington eatery it’s not a simple matter of ‘what do you want to eat?’, but rather, ‘what can you not afford to miss?’ at the restaurant that has transformed expectations of seafood dining in Sydney forever. It takes a lot of devotion to be at the top of the game in Sydney’s famously volatile dining scene consistently for so many years. And at Saint Peter, they have it in spades.

Set foot in the regal Paddington terrace that used to house both Guillaume and Darcy’s, and you’ll be met with Melbourne designer Brahman Perera’s whimsical pastiche of warm butterscotch tones and vibrant blues, cushy carpeting, glowing Maison Balzac glassware and sculpted Clementine Maconachie wall lights that look like origami folded by Frank Gehry. Spark joy the space certainly does, and so, too, should the guy doing the cooking – one of the country’s most well-respected and likeable chefs, Phil Wood. More and more, we’re seeing chefs branching out on their own, opening restaurants they’d like to sit in, working hours they’d like to work, serving food they’d like to eat. And at Ursula's we're more than happy to walk the path that Wood is treading.

Time Out’s People’s Choice Awards this year invited readers to select their favourite restaurant, bar, pub and café, and the votes are in.