Local Knowledge Means Local: Why Sydney's Food Scene Is Part of Knowing This City

When you engage a Buyers Agent or Relocation Consultant, you'd reasonably expect them to know Sydney property.

Which suburbs offer better value. Which streets are noisy. Where you can walk to the ferry. Which side of a suburb gets you to the city faster. Where the good schools, parks and village centres are.

But to me, local knowledge means local.

It means knowing what it actually feels like to live somewhere. And, because I am completely obsessed with food, that inevitably means knowing where to eat.

Sydney is famous around the world for its harbour, beaches, Bridge, Opera House and extraordinary flora and fauna. But there's something else I think we should be shouting from the rooftops: the food.

For some reason, Tourism Australia doesn't seem to shout nearly loudly enough about it, and so far they haven't asked me for my guide. More fool them!

People relocating here generally have no idea just how good Sydney's food is until they arrive.

First, the coffee

Sydney is crazy about coffee. I recently spent time with Italian clients who told me Italy isn't obsessed with coffee the way we are!

Australians took café culture, added our own exacting standards and somehow reached the point where ordering a bad coffee in Sydney is actually quite difficult.

We will argue endlessly with Melbourne about who does it better — I'll diplomatically call it a draw — but Sydney has some exceptional coffee.

ONA Coffee in Marrickville, Single O in Surry Hills and Only Coffee Project Crows Nest (my personal favourite) are among the names coffee obsessives know, but the more important point for someone moving here is that excellent coffee isn't confined to a handful of famous cafés.

It's everywhere.

Your local suburban café  barrista will know exactly what you mean by a flat white, piccolo or long black — and will probably remember your order after a few visits.

Sydney doesn't have one Chinatown. It has dozens of food neighbourhoods.

This is where Sydney stands out. It's one of the most valuable pieces of local knowledge I pass on to new arrivals. More often than not they had no idea.

Yes, we have Chinatown in Haymarket. But some of the best Asian food in Sydney is nowhere near it.

Burwood has become one of Sydney's great Chinese food destinations. Walk down Burwood Road and you'll find restaurants specialising in regional Chinese cuisines, dumplings, skewers, hotpot and hand-pulled noodles. There are places where people queue for bowls of beef noodle soup as though nothing else matters.

Chatswood  feels like a mini Singapore or Hong Kong. Chinese, Malaysian, Singaporean, Korean and Japanese restaurants are everywhere — including in food courts where some of the best meals cost less than $20.  Yes, you can still eat in Sydney for under $20. Shout out here to Mamak in Chatswood, the sister restaurant to Mamak in Chinatown which still draws weekend queues after almost 20 years. Don't want to queue for - what is without question - Sydney's best satay and roti? Head straight to the Chatswood branch.

Hurstville is another major destination for Chinese food, particularly Cantonese and regional Chinese cooking. Ashfield is known for Shanghainese dumplings.

Then there are Sydney's Vietnamese centres.

Cabramatta is the undisputed king of Vietnamese food in Sydney and deserves a food expedition all of its own. Marrickville is another favourite and home to the original Marrickville Pork Roll. But these days I'm just as likely to head straight for VN Street Foods, which has become such a success it's taken over three adjoining premises on Illawarra Road. The queue moves quickly, but I'd happily wait for one of the tiny outdoor tables. Bankstown's Pho An is legendary. There are Sydneysiders who think nothing of driving an hour for a bowl of pho. Guilty as charged. And here's my pro tip: always order the side of beef balls. Trust me on this one.

Marrickville's Vietnamese food sits alongside Greek, Portuguese, modern Australian and just about everything else, and has become one of Sydney's great eating suburbs.

For Korean food, head to Strathfield and Lidcombe, where Korean barbecue, fried chicken, noodles, soups and late-night restaurants have created their own Koreatowns.

For Thai food, there's an actual Thai Town around Haymarket, where restaurants, grocers and dessert shops spill through the streets around Campbell Street. Abb Air is about as authentic as it comes, serving bold Isaan cuisine that will transport you straight to northeast Thailand. I can't go past the Yen Ta Fo with its mouth tingling pink broth. Just around the corner, Show Neua has quickly become one of Sydney's hardest tables to secure, specialising in the rich, aromatic dishes of Northern Thailand - including a top notch Khao Soi. I have a weakness for their crispy garlic pork bites and chicken wings. In fact, if you leave without ordering them, I think you've missed half the experience.

Then Sydney heads to Europe.

Petersham remains our Portuguese heartland — think charcoal chicken, bacalhau, custard tarts and Portuguese bakeries.

And Sydney's traditional Italian belt runs through Leichhardt, Haberfield and Five Dock. Italian migration shaped these suburbs and you can still shop for bread, cheese, salumi, pasta and pastries from businesses that have been feeding local families for generations. In Five Dock, people literally queue down the street for $15 deli focaccia paninis at Ranieri's. Thanks to Instagram and Tiktok of course.

This is what I mean when I tell relocation clients that choosing where to live in Sydney isn't just about kilometres from the CBD.

My favourite Sydney food obsession? Laksa.

Sydney takes laksa extremely seriously.

Particularly in winter.

Ask a group of Sydneysiders where to find the city's best laksa and prepare for an argument.

Malay Chinese has had a cult following for decades. Happy Chef in the Sussex Centre food court in Haymarket is another long-time favourite. Into Laksa has expanded across Sydney and I regularly take clients to its St Leonards branch for lunch. Meanwhile, Ho Jiak has taken Malaysian food from casual Chinatown eating to sophisticated dining rooms, while still staying true to its roots.

Everyone has their favourite.

Laksa here is almost a religion: rich coconut broth, noodles, tofu puffs, chicken, seafood, chilli — and inevitably someone at the table explaining why the laksa they know is better.

This is perfectly normal Sydney behaviour.

Do you know Khao Soi?

If you love laksa and you haven't discovered Khao Soi yet, we need to talk.

Khao Soi is the great noodle soup of Chiang Mai and Northern Thailand — think of it as laksa's Northern Thai cousin. A rich coconut curry broth, soft egg noodles, crispy noodles piled on top, usually chicken or beef, with pickled mustard greens, shallots, lime and chilli on the side.

It is, in my opinion, the best soup on the planet.

I've been obsessed with it since my first trips to Chiang Mai. In fact, I actually wrote a blog post years ago calling Khao Soi "arguably the best soup in the world" after one particularly dedicated four-day visit to Chiang Mai during which I managed to eat it five times.

The problem used to be finding it in Sydney.

Not anymore.

Chat Thai in The Galeries Victoria, George Street in the CBD was one of the first spots to find Khao Soi. While it now pops up on menus at Thai restaurants around Sydney, Chat Thai's is still hard to beat.

But the ultimate sign that Sydney has embraced my favourite Northern Thai soup?

We now have an entire restaurant called Khao Soi.

It's hidden upstairs on Level 2 of a building in Liverpool Street in the CBD. You take the lift up, the doors open and suddenly there's a restaurant full of people who know exactly why they're there.

And they queue for it.

A few years ago I was telling people where they might be lucky enough to find Khao Soi in Sydney.

Now there's a restaurant devoted to it.

It's a reminder that Sydney's food scene never stands still. Every year it becomes a little more diverse, a little more authentic and a little more exciting.

Hainanese chicken rice deserves its own category

If you've lived in Singapore or Malaysia, you may arrive in Sydney wondering whether you'll be able to find proper Hainanese chicken rice.

You will.

East West Gourmet in the Mandarin Centre in Chatswood has long been known for it. Then there are versions at Ho Jiak and Amah, along with countless Malaysian and Singaporean restaurants and food-court stalls across Sydney.

The search for the perfect combination of silky poached chicken, fragrant rice, ginger, chilli and chicken broth is another Sydney food obsession I wholeheartedly support.

The Japanese Restaurants I'll Happily Cross Sydney For

Sydney does Japanese food extraordinarily well. This deserves far more international recognition than it gets.

Sydney has some superb omakase restaurants, including Sushi Oe, Yoshii's Omakase and Kuon.

Getting into some of them has traditionally been part of the sport. Reservations are released, food obsessives pounce and the seats disappear.

Sushi Oe, formerly hidden away in Cammeray, has now moved into the spectacular new Sydney Fish Market. Chef Toshihiko Oe now serves just 10 guests at his counter, and there's an online booking system, making the pursuit of a seat somewhat easier than it used to be.

I'd also add Ora in Waterloo to my list. While it offers an exceptional omakase experience, you don't have to book the omakase to enjoy what I think is one of Sydney's finest Japanese restaurants. For me, Ora offers the complete package: a stunning contemporary fit-out, one of the warmest welcomes in Sydney from Chef Ura-san and Sumika-san (Susie), the maître d', and a menu that keeps me coming back. The crispy rice topped with spicy tuna has become something of a signature dish and is almost impossible to resist ordering. And if you're a wagyu lover, I genuinely think Ora serves the best wagyu in Sydney. Beautifully marbled, perfectly cooked and wonderfully rich, it's one of those dishes I find myself thinking about long after I've left. It's the sort of restaurant where regulars are greeted like old friends, making every visit feel genuinely special.

One suburb deserves a special mention: Crows Nest. It has quietly evolved into one of Sydney's most exciting Japanese dining precincts, with an extraordinary concentration of outstanding restaurants.

Yakitori Yurippi is the kind of tiny yakitori restaurant that makes you feel for an evening as though you've stumbled into Tokyo.

Sakana-Ya is gloriously old school and sublime — the sort of neighbourhood Japanese restaurant that doesn't need to be fashionable.

And Norimono brings something different again: a Japanese hand-roll counter where the hand rolls are made in front of you.

That's before we even get started on ramen. Or the fact that you can buy the freshest sashimi from the Fish Market, over the counter at a tiny little hole in the wall takeaway shop  - Sashimi Shinsengumi opposite the Crows Nest metro station. I just gave away a well guarded secret!

The wonderful thing about Japanese food in Sydney, though, is that it isn't restricted to expensive destination restaurants. The quality of everyday sushi here can be remarkably high, and good Japanese food can be found throughout metropolitan Sydney.

The New Sydney Fish Market Is DefintelyWorth the Trip

As if Sydney needed another reason to boast about seafood.

The new Sydney Fish Market at Blackwattle Bay has transformed a trip to the fish market into a genuine Sydney food destination.

It isn't simply somewhere to buy fish anymore.

There's Hamsi Taverna, from Somer Sivrioglu and the Efendy team, cooking seafood with Aegean influences.

There's Tam Jiak, from Ho Jiak's Junda Khoo, bringing Malaysian flavours to the market.

Lua by Luke Nguyen brings Vietnamese and Southeast Asian influences to Australian seafood.

And Sushi Oe has relocated here alongside other Japanese and seafood offerings.

You can buy freshly shucked oysters and sashimi, tuck into a seafood fried rice piled high with calamari and abalone (pictured), share giant garlic-grilled prawns, or keep it simple with traditional fish and chips by the water. You can of course also stock up on beautiful seafood to cook at home. The only real problem is deciding what to eat first.

The new Sydney Fish Market is the best thing to have happened to Sydney since the new metro line opened up on the Lower North Shore in 2024.

Yes, we also do avocado toast

Of course, Sydney has beautiful breakfast cafés on practically every corner.

You can have your smashed avocado, perfectly poached eggs, sourdough, granola, acai bowl and Eggs Benedict in almost any suburb you choose.

I'm just not the person to give you a definitive guide to them.

Given the choice, I'll invariably be heading for the Asian option.

What does any of this have to do with property?

Quite a lot, actually.

When I'm helping someone buy a home or relocate to Sydney, I'm not simply looking at a property in isolation.

I'm looking at the life around it.

Can you walk somewhere good for dinner on Friday night? Which suburbs are still buzzing after 8.30pm? Is there decent coffee on the way to the station? Where will you buy fresh food? Can you get great takeaway when you've had a long day?

For clients relocating from overseas, food can also be one of the quickest ways to feel at home in a completely new city.

Someone arriving from Singapore may be delighted to discover Chatswood. A Japanese family may feel immediately comfortable around Crows Nest. An Italian family might fall in love with Haberfield. And someone who simply loves eating their way around the world could happily spend years exploring Sydney suburb by suburb.

That's the kind of local knowledge that can't be learnt from property data.

I've lived in Sydney for decades, on both sides of the Harbour Bridge, and exploring its neighbourhoods — and their food — is still one of my favourite things about this city.

So yes, I'll tell you about property values, transport, aspect, schools, streets and resale potential.

But I'll probably also tell you where to get the laksa.

Because local knowledge means local.