Manly on the rise, less three-hatted venues: Trends from the Good Food Guide

The Herald Guide is out. Sydney scores its first hatted Filipino restaurant, it’s been a record year for the Northern Beaches and we’ve seen a generational shift.

October 31, 2026

Phew. After reading 124,600 words of background notes from our reviewers, logging receipts for 14,867 kilometres’ worth of travel across NSW and the ACT, and encountering six birds served with their head on a plate, we launched the annual Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide on Monday evening. Marrickville’s Olympic Meats was on snack-pack duties; Peter Gilmore received a standing ovation for his contribution to Australian cuisine; Paddington’s Porcine was awarded a much-deserved second hat. Terrific stuff.

It’s the Herald’s 42nd edition of the Guide, and the best way to read every review of the restaurants we’ve visited, from Albury to Bondi to Byron Bay, is through the Good Food app. With every hatted restaurant now announced for another year, we can pull out some trends and themes in Sydney dining, such as Manly coming into its own as a food destination, and a bumper year for Filipino food. Here are five key takeaways from the new Good Food Guide.

Three-hatted consolidation

Two restaurants were awarded three hats – the pinnacle of Good Food’s scoring system: Stanmore’s modestly sized Sixpenny and Josh Niland’s voyage of fish-based discovery, Saint Peter. The last time Sydney had only two three-hatted restaurants was 1988, when Berowra Waters Inn and Claude’s topped the Good Food Guide charts. This is mostly because two three-hatted Sydney restaurants also closed in 2026. UK-based chef Clare Smyth didn’t renew her Oncore contract at Crown and is focusing on a new London restaurant instead; and after 38 years of running Australia’s flagship fine diner, restaurateur Leon Fink called it a day at Quay.

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But in terms of interstate rivalry (which Melbourne seems to care about more than Sydney), there’s no escaping the fact that Victoria now has more three-hatted restaurants than NSW. At The Age Good Food Guide Awards on October 12, Melbourne claimed four three-hatted restaurants – Yiaga, Amaru, Minamishima and Vue de Monde, plus Brae in regional Victoria. Surely this will change over the next two years, with Crown Sydney investing in a fine diner from Swedish mega-chef Björn Frantzén to replace Oncore (the bloke already has several global awards and looks set to go all-in on fine dining in Sydney), while a few independent operators with three-hat ambitions are already very close to realising them.

The changing face of the hats

At the two-hat level we saw a consolidation of new venues from established operators, places with broad menus built to play on repeat, and more ways for diners to spend money with them instead of someone else. Feel like a drink before hitting up Ashe? Try its bar, Vespertine, next door. Want a snack before dinner at Flaminia? There’s a crudo bar inside the restaurant. Neil Perry’s Gran Torino went from one hat to two (it has also just launched a separate bar), as did Grandfathers in the CBD, from the team behind Clam Bar andPellegrino 2000.

In one-hat territory the restaurants and suburbs continued to diversify, reflecting ongoing changes in the scoring system that place greater emphasis on value and cooking with a point of view. Sinclair’s (Penrith) and Cricca (Windsor) retained their hats, and we also saw the Guide’s first hatted Filipino restaurant (Takam), its first hatted restaurant in Eastwood (Yeodongsik) and a hatted Persian restaurant in North Willoughby (Tida Persian Food).

Meanwhile, one hat for Olympic Meats, a gyros shop in Marrickville, was reward for a venue doing it all from scratch. “It’s so tied to the cultural and social history of the area,” said reviewer Cheyenne Bardos. “Everything is made in-house in a true homage to Greek village cooking. It’s stylish and modern but still fun and nostalgic. I’d be really proud to take a tourist here.”

Northern exposure

The 1989 Good Food Guide included four Manly listings: Indian Experience, Imperial Peking, Le Kiosk and Just Prawns (which also sold soup). In 2011 the Guide declared the suburb was a “foodie backwater no more”, largely thanks to Manly Pavilion earning a hat in its debut year. In 2026 Manly scored its first two-hat restaurant – Cantonese-focused Stanley, led by former Good Food Guide Young Chef of the Year Louis Tikaram.

Stanley sits next door to Felons Seafood on Manly Wharf, which opened last year and received its first hat on Monday. Chef Alessandro Pavoni’s Manly Beach long-luncher Cibaria retained its hat, and its cocktail lounge was one of the Guide’s Top 20 Sydney Bars. This means more hats than ever before in Manly, and Melbourne-based restaurateur Chris Lucas has also announced a Chin Chin outpost will launch there in mid-2027 at Two Tides, a high-end residential development on Raglan Street.

Other Guide-listed Manly spots include The Herring Room, Banco, The Cumberland, Norma’s Deli, Rollers Bakehouse and Noon Cafe. With a wave of luxury and mixed-use development transforming the area, this list will only keep growing: ambitious restaurateurs are attracted to high-income, high-density areas, where people are more likely to dine out regularly.

Go west, young chef

“The gentrification of the inner west is complete,” wrote Sally Loane, reporting for the Herald in 1993. “A Newtown restaurant, Goodfellas, has been named Sydney’s best new restaurant by the Good Food Guide.”

We can’t help but wonder what Loane must think of this year’s Guide, in which Stanmore’s Sixpenny received three hats and T2 Tea Restaurant of the Year. South End near St Peters station claimed a shared Oceania Cruises Chef of the Year gong for co-owners Alex Tong and Hussein Sarhan.

These awards are in addition to a major haul of 16 hatted restaurants for Newtown and the Inner West Council area, up from last year when it claimed 12 hats (and up from zero hats in 2005). Last year Enmore Road had more hatted restaurants than all of Potts Point combined, although the inner-east suburb bounced back in 2026 thanks to Fratelli Paradiso’s hat return, and the Bar Copains team taking over La Buvette.

The CBD, including Barangaroo and Circular Quay, retained the highest number of hatted restaurants (35), due to reasons specified above regarding high-density areas.

Generational shift, regional flavours

There wasn’t just a generational shift at the pointy end of dining, there’s change happening at every level. In previous years the Guide might have celebrated a Cantonese restaurant in the heart of Chinatown but skipped the regional Chinese cooking that makes Sydney such a unique place to eat. But our list of 100 Essential Restaurants featured a Cantonese seafood palace in Blacktown, a Northern Chinese restaurant in Burwood, a Dongbei restaurant in Chatswood and a no-frills noodle shop in Riverwood. Taste of Shunde in Hurstville, a regional Cantonese restaurant, also retained its hat.

Callan Boys is Good Food’s national eating out and restaurant editor.Connect via X or email.

David Matthews is editor of The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide.

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