First Taste: Glebe Point Diner

In a year already marked by showy, multimillion-dollar openings, the resounding Sydney hit thus far has been an establishment that can count paper tablecloths and plastic tomato-shaped ketchup bottles among its design highlights. Not that Glebe Point Diner is a less-than-polished experience: it's just down-home without pretense. A short, sweet blackboard menu lists the likes of sorrel-and-pea soup, sexed-up with just-shucked Pacific oysters, alongside green olive and beef shoulder ragu with rigatoni. The suckling pig—its skin richly bronzed, the meat succulent and tender—comes accented with salt, spice, prunes, and lentils. And few dessert menus please the inner child and outer restaurant critic so equally as one listing both banana fritters with rum 'n' raisin ice-cream and a rosemary-and-honey panna cotta teamed with pinkly roasted quince. It comes as something of a relief to visit a new restaurant that saddles you with no concept and offers no instruction on how the menu works or how to eat each dish. Order, eat, swoon, and repeat as often as the quite reasonable prices allow.