Devouring Sydney

In Melbourne, they ask you where you went to school; in Sydney, we ask you where you live. In Melbourne, they’re interested in the flavors of Europe and the Middle East; in Sydney, we’re enthralled by Asia. Melbournians may claim to have the best bars, but Sydneysiders make the best drinks. Melbournians say they have better style, but Sydneysiders have the hotter bodies. We have the sunny days; they have the spangled nights. And the rain. I’ll give you the clichés; you sift for the truths.

Yet despite our historical animosity, we share a common vocabulary, opaque to outsiders, of ANZAC biscuits, Pavlovas, Lamingtons, Vanilla Slices, Tim Tams, and salad sandwiches. (New Zealanders, incidentally, will tell you they invented all these things. Just ignore them; we do.) We both came from colonial staples of tea, mutton, rum, and the unleavened bread we call damper, and we now collectively obsess over espresso, jamón, Wagyu, sustainably caught local fish, organic sourdough, and biodynamic Albariño. And although Melbournians might call lobsters crayfish, we both like them steamed with XO sauce or char-grilled with salsa verde. But if you want to get a picture of what the best Australian eating can be, Sydney is where it’s at.

With the unabashed exuberance to be truly memorable, Sydney is a town that isn’t afraid to dream the bigger dream, to have the cake and eat it, too, and then cut another slice. The food scene has these qualities in spades. Our good eating is on the beaches and the cliff tops, on our wharfs and promenades. At Icebergs, you can pop Gosset and Veuve among guitar heroes and CFOs while surfers ride the 12-foot breaks on Bondi Beach below you. Or you can go for the straight-off-the-sand sarong-tied paradise of Campari with fresh blood-orange juice and white fish carpaccio flecked with chile and fennel seeds at North Bondi Italian Food, at the other end of the beach. Between them, at Sean’s Panaroma, leading men and dolled-up nanas get equal airtime from tanned waiters dispensing silken chook-liver pâté and malt bread with aplomb. In Sydney, the big-view restaurant with good—no, great—food isn’t just a reality; it’s an expectation.

We’ve got the eye candy, but it’s stuff of substance. The waters seethe with boats (not to mention the odd shark), the intrepid climb all over the Harbour Bridge, and the sails of the Sydney Opera House play host not only to the hits of Puccini and Patti Smith but also to those of former Robuchon lieutenant Guillaume Brahimi—and his blue-swimmer-crab sandwiches are on key every time. You can discover elegantly rendered Sardinian food—snapper with green olives and Vernaccia, perhaps, or roast suckling pig on the bone, crunchy for days—in a grand old beach house at Pilu at Freshwater. The newly revived Berowra Waters Inn, in the city’s northern reaches, offers a different sort of water view. Pritzker Prize–winning architect Glenn Murcutt designed the building, sandwiched between a cliff face and the Hawkesbury River, to all but fade into the background as diners immerse themselves in the magical setting (and Dietmar Sawyere’s roast squab with langoustine pastilla and fennel). It’s accessible only by water, via the restaurant’s own ferry or the more glamorous likes of your own launch, and there’s nothing quite like seeing the chef himself help push a seaplane out from the jetty to know you’re really somewhere else.

If seafood is the ultimate test of a chef’s skills and resources, Sydney stands alongside Barcelona, Tokyo, and Hong Kong in the abundance of its catch, the intelligence with which it is prepared, and the gusto of its consumption. Australia’s biggest fish market is here, and short of throwing in a line yourself, there’s no better place to find richly marbled toro from Port Lincoln’s tuna ranches, Geraldton’s spiny lobsters, whopping barramundi and bone-crushing mud crabs from the croc-infested waters of the Northern Territory, and abalone and delicate trumpeter from the chilly channels off Tasmania. And let’s not forget the famed Sydney rock oyster, as much a part of the dining landscape here as its cousins are in New York City and Paris. Familiarity, in this instance, has bred respect.

Sydney’s diners and chefs know what they want and don’t like to compromise. It’s something you can taste and feel in the barely set proteins of the fish at the city’s best restaurants: the John Dory, pot-roasted whole with black pepper and garlic at the attractively addled Fish Face; the pan-roasted barramundi with caramelized endive, bitter orange, and serrano ham at Pier; the dozen different oysters from around the country with rye bread and butter at The Boathouse on Blackwattle Bay; the sous vide swordfish steak with foie gras jus at Rockpool; the lobster sashimi accompanied by frosty Tsingtaos at Golden Century, eaten at midnight by chefs, gamblers, showbiz types, and other night owls. Each of these dishes speaks of iki-jimi spiking, precise cold-chain management, dry filleting, and other practices unmatched outside Japan. And, hey, where else can you eat Balmain bugs?

It’s Sydney, too, where you’ll find Japanese chefs breaking new ground with Tasmanian sea urchin and Queensland-grown bamboo shoots, where Cantonese visitors thrill to Australian beef and abalone, and where you’ll find the deepest pho and the freshest som tum outside Vietnam and Thailand, respectively. Long recognized as one of the Anglophone world’s capitals of Asian dining, Sydney also has thriving Thai, Vietnamese, and Korean scenes, which complement a Chinese food culture that supports several sizable Chinatowns. It’s a telling indication of this town’s appetite for ever more interesting Asian eats that Neil Perry’s new blockbuster restaurant, Spice Temple, looks for inspiration not to Canton but to Hunan, Shanxi, Xinjiang, and Yunnan. Try finding the likes of quail relish with steamed egg custard or tea-smoked duck breast with pickled cabbage and Chinese mustard alongside a world-class wine list in another city—even in China.

The unrelenting smarts and sense of fun of Melbourne’s modern masters can’t be denied, but they look like they’re playing it safe when you compare their work to the kind of punch and refinement exhibited by Sydney’s red-haute top players. The pork belly with green-lip abalone, handmade tofu, and chive flowers at Quay comes to mind, as does the almond jelly with crab, almond gazpacho, prune oil, and sweet-corn custard at Marque. At Est., Peter Doyle’s steamed coral trout with shaved abalone, cucumber, and ginger vinaigrette is peerless.

The trend toward white-tablecloth food and interesting wine in less formal surrounds is also in good health here. At Bentley, you can sit at the bar drinking Austrian Pinot Noir while you savor jamón ibérico priced by the sensuous slice or smoked-eel parfait with white soy; nod your head to Royal Crown Revue at Bodega while you hit the small plates of house-made chorizo and chunky toasts topped with raw mackerel and cuttlefish; or squeeze yourself onto the tiny three-legged stools of the hothouse known as Billy Kwong and work your way through celeb chef Kylie Kwong’s neo-Cantonese takes on red braised-beef brisket with shoyu dressing and crisp-skinned chicken with brown-rice vinegar. Yes, we like to party.

If the best of new-world cuisine is about richness and diversity of influence and freedom of invention tempered by an understanding of tradition, this is it. Melbourne likes to draw comparisons with Sydney, but Sydney’s restaurateurs measure themselves against London, New York, and Paris. If only those cities had some beaches worth a damn.

Sydney Address Book

Bentley Restaurant and Bar 320 Crown St., Surry Hills (02-9332-2344; thebentley.com.au)

Spice Temple 10 Bligh St. (02-8078-1888; rockpool.com.au/sydney/spice-temple.html)