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Welcome to the third annual Good Food Cap Awards. Similar to last year, The Caps are just like our Good Food Guide Awards and our announcement of hatted restaurants in October, just looser fitting and significantly more freewheeling. Is it essentially a food trends feature in disguise? Maybe. But if you didn’t eat a loaf’s worth of prawn toast, two-dozen skewers and at least three soups, did you even dine out in Sydney in 2025?
And if you’re after more top dining picks from around the state and the ACT, the Good Food app holds more than 500 Good Food Guide reviews and recommendations, including a list of 150 Critics’ Picks, the most essential restaurants right now. Plus, the 10 best new restaurants of 2025, and 10 more to try.
Best Merch
First, there were band shirts. Now, there are bar shirts. Hospitality merchandise neared critical mass this year, but one brand stood out among the sea of cartoon coffee cups and retro deli typography: Ester Spirits. The Marrickville distillery makes a ringer tee inspired by ’70s sportswear, ideal for power-walking the nearby Inner West Ale Trail, as well as simple black or white tees with cocktails created in their signature electrical-tape-turned-art style. You can order them online, but you’re better off going into the distillery on a Friday night when there’s live jazz and a $25 cheeseburger and martini deal. Bianca Hrovat
Best Staff Uniforms
Smart, conceptual waitstaff uniforms have been on the rise in the past few years, but 2025 was the year when staff at certain restaurants were often dressed better than their well-to-do patrons. Worktones is spotted everywhere, from steak frites CBD eatery 24 York, to three-hatted seafood restaurant Saint Peter. But two Sydney restaurants in particular come to mind. The breezy Greek hotspot Olympus enlisted the help of “lifestyle project” Alex and Trahanas to design a French blue striped set, featuring a long shirt with a fabric belt. Designer Alexandra Heard said the uniform was inspired by “what you’d want to wear on holiday”.
Going even more high end, the team at our Restaurant of the Year, Corner 75, sports custom uniforms from Sydney label Song for the Mute. A men’s cupro shirt by the brand currently retails for $695, but the bespoke brown pants and pastel shirts, made from deadstock fabric, aren’t for sale. Waiters whisk around the room taking orders on notebooks that fit perfectly in their breast pockets, popping in their Neapolitan ice-cream coloured outfits against the burgundy walls. I’m invested in these uniforms because a) I’d like to wear them myself, and b) it speaks to how restaurants in a competitive, aesthetics-focused city like Sydney are forced to communicate their brand in increasingly detailed ways. BH
Prawn Toasts of the Year
We’re living in a golden age of prawn toast, but not as you remember it. Grandfathers makes its version by curling a butterflied prawn over sourdough, coating everything in almonds and frying. The tail then becomes an easy-to-pick-up “handle” so you can dip the craggy bundle in sweet and sour sauce.
Lee Ho Fook’s toast might be the size of a wrestler’s thumb, but it’s an elegant thumb: fluffy toast with sweet mousse that’s been perfectly fried so it’s soft on the inside, crisp on the outside, and then topped with Tasmanian sea urchin roe and plated with a pot of salted egg yolk butter. As David Matthews said in his review, “Hot, cold; cooked, raw; crunchy, soft. Liong weaves them all together, drawing on Chinese tradition but also the here and now.”
And while it’s not exactly Chinese, we should also mention chef Andrianto Wirya’s take at Island Radio, in which sweet king prawns are stuffed into buttery, shatteringly crisp roti, then plated with fermented chilli aioli and slips of pickled cucumber. Then there’s the oblique reference at Letra House, featuring three red carid prawns curled over a crisp tostada, slicked with paprika oil and capped with a few rasps of lime zest. We don’t know how long this trend has left to run, but if these new takes are anything to go by, there’s a way to go yet. Sarah Norris and David Matthews
Best Chips
French fry, crinkle cut or waffle, this year it didn’t seem to matter what shape the potato was, as long as it was cooked in beef tallow. Chef Rick Stein, who has just opened his first Sydney restaurant, Rick Stein at Coogee Beach, has been frying his chips this way for decades. “It reminds me of roast beef. It’s the traditional and best way of frying,” he says. Rosie’s in Coledale was a strong runner up, thanks to its stubby chicken-salt-stained oblongs, handcut from Robertson potatoes and cooked in grass-fed beef dripping from Cleaver & Co.
The best batch, however, came from the fryer baskets at Olympic Meats in Marrickville, where owner-chef Timothy Cassimatis fries seasonal spuds (currently creamy, white-fleshed White Star potatoes from The Gourmet Potato) in beef tallow until crisp, sharp and almost orange, before tossing them in Nostimini, a moreish Mediterranean seasoning – or “Greek yum yum” as he calls it. Tim personally tastes a chip from every bowl before they go out “to make sure they’re consistent and done properly”. Lodge them straight into your pork gyros, or swipe them through the bright, tangy “Big Mac sauce” made from koji mustard and grilled baby onions. Erina Starkey
Soup of the Year
Hey, kids – it’s soup! It’s back! If you know Sean’s in Bondi, you know to always order the soup – maybe cooling cucumber, maybe fennel chowder – and it’s quickly become a go-to at Newtown’s South End, too – maybe ajo blanco, maybe chilled cherry and beetroot. Corner 75 offers your choice of a flavour-thrumming chicken matzo ball or Hungarian gulyasleves, and Saint Peter’s tasting menu kicks off with a fish soup of incredible clarity and coral trout bone noodles.
Single-serve malatang hotpot continued its world domination in 2025; newly hatted Yeodongsik’s Korean “hangover” soup was so popular it had to move from Lidcombe to a bigger site in Eastwood; and the egg and lemon avgolemono has been a sleeper hit at Olympus Dining. But there can only be one Soup of the Year winner, and that’s Jongguk Lee, from Guk’s Eedaero Gamjatang in Lidcombe. Gamjatang – a Korean spicy pork bone stew with potatoes and vegetables built for sharing in a large stone pot – is the only thing Lee serves and he goes through 60 kilograms of pork bones a day to make what he calls “the soul food of Koreans”. Guk’s will often be full with diners from 7am to midnight. Callan Boys
Pasta Shape of the Year
Pici, the rustic, hand-rolled pasta from Tuscany, traditionally made with just flour and water, has long been a staple of cucina povera, Italy’s peasant food culture. Now look at it. Last year, the launch of a single, extra-long noodle: the Pico XL at Attenzione! in Redfern helped to spring off the trend. Attenzione! chef Toby Stansfield makes his with the addition of semolina and potato starch to give it a chewy texture and a slippery, shiny finish. Complemented by a striking green scallion crema, the pici dangled teasingly across social media, causing the dish to sell out night after night.
This year, Rovollo opened in the CBD with a roving pasta cart, serving its signature pici carbonara straight from a flaming wheel of parmigiano reggiano. Our favourite, however, stayed closer to its roots: pici all’aglione made on San Marzano tomatoes and sweet elephant garlic at Osteria Stef & Co in Coffs Harbour. ES
Skewer of the Year
There have been more fantastic skewers in Sydney this year than you can shake a stick at. Taking first place is the tongue skewer at The Palomar inside the 25hours Hotel on Oxford Street. For such a piece of lean meat, culinary director Mitch Orr and his kitchen crew have worked their magic to make this one melt in the mouth. Westholme wagyu is sliced into tender ribbons and charred, and made even more lush with caramel-y date glaze.
Honourable mentions go to the bright and silky Mooloolaba swordfish skewers at Darlinghurst Filipino restaurant Takam. Owners Aileen Aguirre and Francis Dela Cruz call it swordfish “sinugba”, a term for “barbecued” from the Mindanao region of the Philippines. The fish, covered in a sweet-sour marinade, is grilled and served with a tart native lemon aspen sauce and sea herb atsara, a pickled green papaya condiment.
Finally, you’re likely to have seen them being toted around the city streets in meaty bouquets sticking out of cups, or you may have copped a whiff of their cumin-dusting from two blocks away. Chinese skewers, or “shaokao” are the ultimate hand-held snack for roaming around Dixon Street markets, or, as I’ve seen more recently, riding on the Metro. Some of our favourites include Time for Skewers in Haymarket and Kwafood Fried Skewer in Burwood. Isabel Cant
2025 sandwich stocktake
Just when you thought Sydney’s sandwich scene couldn’t get more saturated, the city doubled down on new shops in 2025. Good Food’s Sandwich Watch saw a fair few hot sandwich joints open, including one in Circular Quay by the elite A.P Bakery crew, A.P. Quay. Get the ones stuffed with fennel seed, lemon and garlic-marinated porchetta and juicy beef cooked on the rotisserie. Kosta’s – easily one of Sydney’s greatest sandwich purveyors (it started in Rockdale and has flourished across the city) – opened an outlet in Martin Place specialising in hot ones. (While we’re talking about Kosta’s, somehow its giant schnitty sandwich keeps on getting bigger.)
Also hot, but Italian – there were sandwiches made from pizza dough. Brookvale’s Tommy Panini added a new store in Bondi serving panuozzo, so there are now two spots to get its very great spicy vodka chicken cotoletta. Eat Ozzo in Pyrmont serves panuozzo, too.
At Tommy Panini, we saw another trend: the use of a blowtorch to melt cheese (griller, be gone). San San does it at their North Strathfield and Revesby shops, and Casa Lu does it in Wollongong as well.
And if you weren’t eating a deli focaccia sandwich in 2025, did you even have lunch? They were everywhere, but we’re particularly fond of the breaded creations 44-year-old Raineri’s Continental Deli makes in Five Dock (expect very long lines) and those from a small sunlit cafe in a Forest Lodge terrace, Delisia. Head to Manly for the beautiful surrounds and deli creations at Norma’s Deli, and in Newcastle, hit up Arno. McMahons Point bakery Fiore has added a city outlet, and at both spots you can custom-build your deli extravaganza. SN
Most dog-friendly butcher
The team at Whole Beast Butchery have trained my dog, Gus, to lead our daily walk down Illawarra Road, to The Place with the Bones. This dog has always been good at weedling food out of strangers – cheese at Dana’s Greek Deli, pizza at Willie the Boatman – but Whole Beast has become the dog equivalent of the never-ending Tim Tam packet. Our freezer is full. And don’t tell Gus, but he isn’t the only dog getting the special treatment: these butchers have been sighted crossing the road to deliver bones to passing hounds, like Santa delivering carnivorous Christmas presents. It’s the kind of good Samaritanism that makes a suburb feel like a community, and as a bonus, it draws our attention to the other good work this family-owned butchery does – carving up sustainably farmed, dry-aged meat, and selling it alongside house-made rillettes, pates and pickles. BH
Pop-up of the year
This year has given us plenty to hang our cap on, from the matcha-obsessed events and collaborations by Kara’s Home Cafe, to the supper clubs run by Zosia Orkisz at Zosia Cooks. In the more traditional stakes, though, nothing stole our hearts like Wal Foster’s work at Bush Ice-Creamery, a two-day-a-week pop-up run out of Brunswick Heads cafe Daily Counter. Ice-creams are made restaurant-style with locally sourced Northern Rivers milk and tropical fruits and spices, and the resulting flavours are plated with a large dose of nostalgia, from Jersey-milk ice-cream with orange jelly topped with whipped cultured cream, through to a galangal-scented scoop served over a bowl of warm rice pudding finished with spiced brown butter. Look out for even more collabs and events, plus pop-ups with other like-minded businesses, including The Salty Mangrove in New Brighton. DM
The non-alcoholic drinks doing the most
Non-alcoholic cocktails approached the $20 mark at several bars in 2025, which seems like a lot for a drink with no booze. Counterpoint: that price is probably quite reasonable when you consider it can take a lot more work to create shrubs and ferments from scratch than it does to make a negroni, not to mention the cost of sourcing peak condition fruit. (Case in point, The Waratah’s effervescent $18 “Cherry and Rose” starring ooray plum, Hall Family cherries, wild rose and semillon verjus.)
Tea pairings have become one of the most interesting ways to drink at some restaurants, and we were super impressed with the offerings at Allta and Lee Ho Fook. Meanwhile, the nuanced tea-based drinks from T.I.N.A (try the original oolong, rose petal, lemon myrtle and calamansi flavour if you need an introduction) are increasingly popular at restaurants that care about their drinks lists. Beverages like T.I.N.A’s, doing their own thing rather than trying to be a beer, wine or spirit, is where the booze-free category is the most exciting.
Other favourites in the Good Food office include Etota, a bittersweet spritz made on Wurundjeri Country; the mango-flavoured Beesbucha mead now available at Harris Farm; OzHarvest’s lightly sparkling collaboration with Kakadu Kitchen that tastes of blueberry and saltbush; and The Doc “pepper soda” flavoured with single-origin black peppercorns and “13 proprietary fruits, roots, herbs and spices” by Adelaide’s Mischief Brew and premium single-origin black pepper brand Pep. CB
Best restaurants for cocktails
Silver’s Motel on Enmore Road was our Good Food Guide Bar of the Year in 2025, but what restaurant is doing the best cocktails? Well. Competitive space, this. Eleven Barrack and The Grill both rock great riffs on steakhouse classics in the CBD, and any of the four Paisano & Daughters in Newtown – Mister Grotto, Osteria Mucca, Joe’s Tavern and Continental Deli – are going to water you very well. (An extra special shout-out to Joe’s mint julep.) Keeping in Newtown, South End’s small list is a lot of straight-up, simple fun (A Doctor Henderson, I presume?) and the mezcal-based tinctures at Lottie in Redfern are everything I ever feel like drinking on a rooftop in summer.
Lottie’s downstairs mate Olympus does great things with mastiha and fig-infused ouzo, and much kudos to the Infinity by Mark Best team for their commitment to using only Australian spirits at Sydney Tower. Grandfathers remixes classics with Chinese ingredients, and its “Sesame Sazerac” is one of my top drinks of the year. But for total dedication and delicious results, few people go harder than Evan Stroeve, who works with NSW producers and farms to inform each cocktail at The Waratah in Darlinghurst. CB
Team Spirit Excellence Award
Thattacha “Eddy” Ariyachinkul. Jason Ooi. Britania Kirana. None of these chefs are household names, but in running the wok section at Island Radio, poaching the chickens at Chatswood’s East West Gourmet or helming the grill at Penrith’s Sinclair’s, they’re the people who remind us that cooking is a team game. The business of running restaurants goes deeper, to the kitchenhands, section waiters, barbacks, assistant sommeliers, booking managers and chefs de partie. Open kitchens might have opened the public’s eyes to some of the realities of what it takes to feed them, but so often the people making the whole show happen remain nameless.
Props then to Lee Ho Fook and Victor Liong, who make a point of listing almost every single staff member on the menu for all to see, from Yashwi Manandhar on the floor, to Brandon Dibb behind the bar, to Taehun Lee in the kitchen. It’s a small gesture, simple to pull off, and it’s a huge measure of respect for the craft of restaurants and the people who make it tick, no matter their level. More please. DM
