The Australian restaurants and cafes chef David Moyle most loves to dine at

It’s a busy time for David Moyle. The acclaimed Australian chef is part of the rotation of top-tier talent cooking over flames at Vivid Sydney’s Fire Kitchen, which wraps up on June 13. He has just finished a three-month stint at Swansea’s retro Waterloo Inn restaurant in Tasmania, and will return to Hobart for Dark Mofo festival’s Winter Feast in June.

At Vivid, diners are enjoying a pork cheek braised over flames for extra smokiness. For Dark Mofo, Moyle has created fried cheesy rice balls made with bull kelp and curd, with primo toppings such as raw bluefin tuna or braised abalone.

The chef and owner of NSW Northern Rivers restaurant Salty Mangrove took some time out from his hectic schedule to share his eating-out and eating-in favourites.

Eating out

My favourite local restaurants and cafes (and go-to dish)

I spend a lot of time in Hobart, Melbourne and the Northern Rivers, so my locals are always changing, but these are my Hobart favourites.

Hobart favourites

Scholé is a little10-seater that’s casual and excellent. It’s hyper-focused and has a very Japanese aesthetic. I’ve mostly been there on Tuesdays for snacks at the standing-only bar.

I’m a regular at cafe Sunbear. It’s just so comforting, with good cooking. I always order the cheesy beans on toast.

Erda is an incredible drinks cafe. I always order a Dirty, a type of iced coffee with a double shot served over frozen cream instead of ice. It’s like an affogato, but it’s not dessert.

I love to go to Lucinda. It’s focused on natural wines – the list is huge – but there’s something for everybody. In spring, I’ll order a zucchini flower stuffed with scallops. I feel like restaurants have stopped doing this, but it’s so good.

If I need breakfast, I’ll go to Hamlet Hobart Cafe. I don’t dine out for breakfast usually, but I like somebody else cooking for me. I prefer savoury; nothing fussy. The eggs with curry butter and cheese is delicious.

Favourite Australian restaurant food memories

In my formative years, I travelled around eating at restaurants, trying to find what I liked and what techniques I enjoyed. Some of the best memories were had at Est in Sydney when Peter Doyle was there. Also of incredible meals at Quay, where sometimes the surprising things, like a simple dressed salad, were the most interesting.

For my 21st birthday, I ate at [the late] Jeremy Strode’s restaurant Pomme on Toorak Road in Melbourne. [Award-winning hospitality legend] Chris Young was on the floor and greeted me at the door like he knew me. Jeremy had a way with three ingredients for a plate and that’s it – anything more is too much.

I love going to good restaurants but try not to impose my food standards on other people. The social element is the most important thing.

Sydney favourites

I had one of the best meals I’ve had in a bloody long time at Grape Garden Beijing Cuisine on Bayswater Road in Potts Point. It’s Cantonese cuisine and you sit on the street in the Cross. The son, Ecca, is working the floor and his mum and dad are in the kitchen. It’s as authentic as it gets outside of China. They have a list of 10 different dumplings they make in-house. They’re not big bombastic dumplings that everyone expects – they do it the way they want to.

Ante in Newtown is always a classic. They pay a lot of attention to quality of sound. The food is almost Japanese, and Italian-leaning as well. They are renowned for the prawn casarecce pasta.

I ate one of the best meals in a long time by myself at the bar at Fontana in Redfern. I loved the stuffed peppers with salted cod, and the cotechino sausage dish was great. There are heaps of choices here; the menu is tight and delicious.

I like Fratelli Paradiso. I always order classics like raw tuna or raw beef and then a small plate of pasta. I ate a spring pasta dish with vegetables, which was great. I also went to Gio Paradiso’s new place, Paradise, and enjoyed marinated artichokes and plat du jour – house focaccia, charcuterie and Tathra oysters.

Ester in Chippendale is a favourite; the cooking there is always razor-sharp. I like classic dishes like the blood sausage sandwich or the whole crab on the wood-fired oven. It’s both rustic and refined.

Also on my list to check out during Vivid is Dan Puska’s Corner 75, a Hungarian restaurant doing traditional goulash and schnitzels.

Melbourne favourites

I love the wine bar Brico in Carlton North. It’s quiet and unassuming and the food changes all the time. I rate the rainbow trout with clams. It’s good to see freshwater fish being used.

City Wine Shop in Spring Street is a city classic. It captures the comfort element of Melbourne that I love. Sitting on the street is where I love to dine.

City wine bar Embla is a must for the cucumbers with soured cream and the wood-fired chicken.

Florian is a great cafe in Carlton North. I always have the daily sandwich.

Eating in

My signature dish and go-to at home

In Tasmania, I’ve been eating a lot of bluefin tuna. I like cooking seafood the most. I like it raw, diced fairly small and served with olive oil, some marinated vegetables and salad leaves. It sounds ridiculously boring, but it’s so good.

My comfort food

My comfort food is pasta. I don’t really have that desire for decadent rich food, but I do eat pasta three times a week. Puttanesca is my favourite, with tomato paste and capers.

The kitchen wisdom I still cling to

The old-school rule of seasoning at different points, not just adding salt at the end. Like with dressing salads, for instance: instead of adding a sprinkle of salt over leaves, salt the vegetables that go into the salad, so that your salt components are integrated into the whole thing.

Vivid’s Fire Kitchen runs in Sydney until June 13. Info and tickets