X-Factor Venues Made to Impress Even the Most Jaded Out-of-Towners
Restaurants and bars across Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne and Adelaide picked for the guest who's already eaten everywhere.
An out-of-town friend who's already eaten well everywhere else needs more than a good menu to sit up and notice — you need a reason the meal couldn't happen anywhere but here. A mini grand piano set dead centre of the dining room, not tucked in a corner as background noise. A steak sauce so closely guarded that even regulars don't know what's in it. A third-generation family still running the room their grandparents opened. That's the kind of detail that turns "nice dinner" into the story they tell when they get home.
Sydney's Bennelong sits inside the actual sails of the Opera House, its dining room lit by a canopy of hand-blown golden orbs designed by Tom Dixon, where Peter Gilmore traded his signature ornate Snow Egg for a looser menu split across three tiers, right down to a pavlova moulded into the shape of the sails overhead. In Brisbane, Stilts is suspended directly on a bridge — ten metres above the river on Kangaroo Point Bridge, with a 180-degree spread across the Story Bridge and the Botanic Gardens. Melbourne's Gimlet took over a 1920s heritage building and split it into a black-and-gold marble cocktail bar, a New York-style dining room, and a private room for twelve — all under honeycomb chandeliers. And in Adelaide, Penfolds Magill Estate serves dinner from the exact foothills vineyard where Grange was first made in 1844, with a cellar list that includes vintages the winery keeps nowhere else. Presented by Honda ZR-V, here are twelve venues that might finally convince your friends to move here.
Read other guides in our A to Z with Honda ZR-V series:
Degustations and Set Menus Worth Booking for a Proper Splurge
Open-Flame Restaurants That Cook With Fire and Smoke
Wine Bars with Excellent By-the-Glass Lists to Slowly Work Through
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RestaurantGimlet at Cavendish House
33 Russell Street, Melbourne
Order the whole Southern Rock lobster baked in saffron rice and watch it land table-side in this 1920s heritage building, with four rooms ranging from cocktail bar to caviar-and-truffle dining upstairs.
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RestaurantSalona
260A Swan Street, Richmond
Run by the same family for nearly 60 years, Melbourne’s oldest Greek restaurant still serves the traditional meze and mains that built its name, now under its third generation of owners.
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RestaurantBennelong
Sydney Opera House, Bennelong Point, Sydney
You’re eating literally inside one of the Opera House’s sails here, an epic harbour panorama out the window and, for dessert, a pavlova sculpted into the shape of the building around you.
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BarCoogee Pavilion
169 Dolphin Street, Coogee
A Merivale beachfront takeover spanning multiple floors, this former pub refit packs a cafe, barber shop, flower stand, games arcade and rooftop bar together, all just steps from Coogee’s sand.
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RestaurantCorner 75
75 Frenchmans Road, Randwick
A pork schnitzel the size of the plate and deep-fried lángos with sour cream have kept this maroon, memorabilia-lined dining room feeling like a slice of Budapest in the Eastern Suburbs since the 1980s.
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BarIcebergs Dining Room and Bar
1 Notts Avenue, Bondi Beach
Two hats and absolute cliff frontage over Bondi’s southern end give this dining room and bar sweeping, multimillion-dollar ocean views to pair with its regional Italian menu.
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RestaurantOTTO Ristorante Brisbane
Sidon Street, South Brisbane
Floor-to-ceiling glass opens this South Bank dining room straight onto the Brisbane River, so handmade pasta and a generous cellar arrive with uninterrupted water views from every single table.
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RestaurantSK Steak & Oyster
48 James Street, Fortitude Valley
Floor-to-ceiling windows and a mini grand piano set the scene for Kiwami wagyu and Fraser Island spanner crab, backed by hundreds of bottles on the list at this James Street fine-diner.
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RestaurantStilts Dining
147E Alice Street, Brisbane City
Built onto the actual bridge, this Kangaroo Point perch sits ten metres above the river with a 180-degree run over the Story Bridge, Kangaroo Point Cliffs and the Botanic Gardens.
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RestaurantSupernormal Brisbane
443 Queen Street, Brisbane City
Half a crispy duck lands table-side with Story Bridge views at this river-facing sibling to Andrew McConnell’s Melbourne original, a near-400-bottle list backing Asian-leaning share plates.
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RestaurantPenfolds Magill Estate
78 Penfold Road, Rosslyn Park
Chef Scott Huggins cooks inside the vineyard where Penfolds began in 1844, still an operating estate in the Adelaide foothills, with an Icon Wine Pairing that runs through Grange itself.
This guide was produced in partnership with Honda ZR-V. To learn more about the ultimate car for urban discovery, click here.