I SEE GOOD THINGS AHEAD.

2026 rules! And speaking of rules, they’re being ripped up all over the place.

Now that we have that pesky first month down and sorted, I think we’re looking good for 2026. It may have been the hand-crafted dumplings dripping with fatty broth that make me feel so positive - or the toasted bacon sandwiches fringed with raspberry jam, or Rick Stein’s new seaside diner, Federico Zanellato’s new bakery café, the Maybe Sammy group’s new Negroni hideout, or the Bentley team’s new Med-led waterside eatery.

Fresh ideas, mostly, and done with a disregard for convention that is equally refreshing.

What did Canadian PM Mark Carney say in his powerful speech recently? That the old rules-based order no longer exists. That we’re in the middle of a rupture, not a transition. That the only future you can build is in ‘values-based realism’.

It’s as timely for the hospitality sector as for the nations of the world.

MOODY MIDDLE EASTERN: WATERMANS

Set back a little from the windy esplanade of Barangaroo and sheltered behind glass, this moody Middle Eastern is brought to you by the team behind The Bentley, Eleven Barrack and King Clarence, and it’s bloody good.

Brent Savage and Nick Hildebrandt along with the excellent Darryl Martin, formerly of Barzarri, are now ensconced in a warm and leathery, coppery interior by the intuitive Pascal Gomes McNabb.

Operators Lendlease made them an offer they couldn’t refuse, in spite of having to close their eight-year-old Cirrus restaurant a stone’s throw away, in 2024. I think the switcheroo will pay off, however, because it’s so good eating this sort of food – tarama, baba ghanoush, tiropita and kofta - brought to you at a high level but still within a casual setting.

It’s a contemporary mix of cover-the-table food, a deejay in the corner (very Pharoah in Athens), a long and inviting bar, and a bucketload of outdoor seating. The next time you want a table for 40 outside, with great food? It’s here.

You might start with olives and pickles. Order the taramasalata, piped onto small rounds of ‘easter bread’ bejewelled with salmon roe. And the tiropita - crisp upright towers of pastry stuffed with aged feta, topped with a fresh cherry half and a caper leaf. Brown-buttery scallops, haloumi-wrapped fig.

A skewer of dry-aged quail is grilled and painted with quince and carob glaze. Lamb kofta with sumac onions and a lush parsley sauce (shown above) is a hit. Side-saddle it with village rice, nutty and flecked with fried noodles. Dessert could be an assured sheep’s yoghurt parfait with peach and orange blossom and lemon verbena and all the good things of late summer.

Lighting pieces are sculptural, metallic. Built-in banquettes. Good glasses. Greek wines. Go for all the little extras – the toum, the yoghurt, the pickled chilli. You can order fries, drink a cocktail, a Greek wine, sit inside or out. More freeing up of what it means to be a restaurant in a corporate enclave; more relaxing of rules.

SOCIABLE SHANGHAINESE: LILONG BY TASTE OF SHANGHAI

The lone diner sits in the middle of the restaurant as staff bring his order – and keep bringing it, until the table is covered with hot and sour soup, drunken chicken, chilli king prawns, braised soy duck and shanghai-style shredded pork. As I watch, prickling with jealousy, he has the soup, then calls for plastic containers and calmly packs everything away to take home.

I immediately double my order.

Lilong is a diffusion label to the glorious Taste of Shanghai that has been rocking Sydney diners since 2005, and specialises in ‘haipai’ cooking, a sort of ‘bringing together’ of various Shanghainese dishes and other styles and influences from across China (and Russia).

When it opened in 2016, Sydney immediately doubled its order.

At Darling Square, the mood is homely and the room is charming, with windows into a kitchen seemingly run by women, busy chopping duck and hand-shaping dumplings.

Order the prawn and vegetable spring rolls, the mossy of shredded pork, tofu and shepherd’s purse (peppery, mustardy wild green), and the xiao long bao soup dumplings, bitingly hot, thin-skinned but not over-steamed, and the Peking duck, which comes with crisp, cold lettuce leaves. Then double it.

PERFECT PASTRIES: LODE ROZELLE

Federico Zanellato of Pyrmont’s LuMi may be one of our most refined chefs, but he also does a very good scrambled egg.

The fourth LoDe venue to open in Sydney, on a glorious, wide corner in Rozelle, is the first within a café space. (LoDe, by the way, is pronounced the Italian way, as in Loh-Deh, as opposed to Load.)

It’s a lovely spot to be in, with pastries lined up like designer watches at the patisserie end, and a clinical laboratorio out the back where all the laminating and piping and crimping and pimping take place.

The olive green and dusky pink colourways have been picked out of the terrazzo tabletops, there’s actual table service, and everything feels fresh and light and whatever the Italian word is for chic (scissoso, actually).

Great eggs – in the contemporary cowpat style – team with crisp fingers of bacon on the house sourdough, chilli oil on the side. Pain au chocolat is amazing, layer after crisp, light, layer. There are sandwiches – the Deli Lama – and burgers and chips. It’s almost criminal to offer so many things that take the attention away from the pastries however, so stay focussed. Eat the pastries.

GONE FISHING: RICK STEIN AT COOGEE.

The thing about Rick Stein is that once he’s settled on something, he’s not going to change it in a hurry. This is both a good thing – for continuity, loyalty, consistency – and a bad thing, because it sets his menus in a weird sort of time-warp.

His third restaurant in Australia, following Mollymook, south of Sydney and Port Stephens, north of Sydney, is in Coogee, and it has a similarly pleasant, white-washed, greenery-filled beachside feel.

It also has the same great produce – fabulous pippis, lovely fish, great oysters, excellent crab – and gives pretty much the same experience, as part of the Intercontinental Hotel opposite the beach.

There’s some fun fishy art by Bridgit Thomas, 224 seats, and a good chef in Colin Chun. The menu is filled with classics – the Newlyn Fish Pie, Provencale fish soup, lobster thermidor. Singapore blue swimmer crab has a dark, sweet chilli sauce that doesn’t seem to lift the crab, more like anchor it. But I still make a right mess of myself because the flesh is so good, going through five of those dinky little just-add-water napkins.. Next time I’ll take a beach towel.

Jill has fish and chips - good harpuka, beef tallow chips, all good - and oysters Charentaise, which Rick and the French have been doing forever. Hot little sausage, cold little oyster, repeat. Some rules don’t need to be broken.

NEW YEAR, NEW WAY OF DOING THINGS.

Here’s a rupture, as well as a transition. Hotel group Accor – the largest hotel operator in Australia and New Zealand, with more than 400 restaurants bars and cafes – is re-shaping its own industry by appointing an in-house food and beverage group.

It’s a fresh move, aligning with local creatives, strategists and deadest cocktail talents. Called Table For, it brings together Stefano Catino and Vince Lombardo of the Maybe Group and Rebecca Gibbs and the team of leading creative agency Example.

Ben Creek, Accor Pacific’s Director of Food and Beverage Operations is using the new group to help launch new concepts and stay one step ahead. They have also pulled in Chris O’Connor, Jenn Price, Culinary Director, Rosy Scatigna, and wine guy, Shun Eto.

It’s a loose remit, with Example handling the launch of Flaminia at the Pullman Quay Grand Sydney Harbour, from Giovanni Pilu and Marilyn Annecchini of Pilu at Freshwater; a top spot for seafood, pasta and kicking back watching ferries (I was hosted to a preview dinner in December and have been back for more).

Next step is putting a Maybe Sammy Italian bar into a George Street hotel lobby (below). It looks as if the dining momentum for the next few years could well be driven by hotels - not known, in the past, for tearing up the rule book.

A NEW KIND OF LOBBY BAR: BAR ALLORA

From memory, the lobby of the Mantra on the corner of George and Bond Streets was a spacious loungey waiting area. Now it’s an eighties-themed, red velvet disco setting for snacky Italian food and Americanellos of Campari, vermouth, lemon myrtle and mango soda. No, they didn’t do a mammoth build – they just sectioned it off with theatrical drapes. What lobby?

Bar Allora is jumping with nervous energy, cocktails, loud music and a simple Italian menu that shape-shifts from breakfast to lunch to plate. It’s a clever concept, and Table For and Maybe Sammy win my Best Use of a Hotel Lobby Award for January.

Rosy Scatigna oversees and Josh Donachie sends out everything from a rather lovely tuna crudo with capers and herbs to a riched-up spaghettone with anchovy butter, lemon and pangrattato, and a fat swordfish cotaletta with blood orange and radicchio. Good grissini (house-baked), and interesting wines - I recall a delicious Verdicchio and a Sicilian Contrade rosso. Well, that beats sitting in an armchair in an empty lobby waiting for your room to be ready.

THE SIGN OF THE CROSS: SOMETHING ITALIAN

Everyone says to bring back the spirit of Kings Cross; the mayhem, the grit, the roller-skate discos, the smelly bars, the anarchy of Darlinghurst Road circa 1970s. It’s too gentrified now, they say, too polite and tidy and bland.

Perhaps they haven’t been to Roslyn Street lately, where Lady Chu has colonised the side street with tropical plants and clothed tables covered with spring rolls and Thai curries. Mayhem ensues every night. Good, spicy mayhem. It pulls the cream out of the eastern suburbs and makes them sit on the street, cars and people whizzing by. Her don’t-give-a-damn attitude extends to offering part of the space to Maurice Terzini, the veteran hospitality pro who resigned from Icebergs Dining Room + Bar in 2025.

Maurice has opened the doors as Something Italian, in a return to the simpler offerings of his early days in hospitality back in Melbourne in the 1990s.

Okay, it’s a little confusing, with tables of Italian food elbow-to-elbow with tables of Thai dumplings, but it sort of works as part of the general chaos; Maurice in a long apron, hustling; Nahji Chu swinging by, hustling.

The food is direct, uncompromising, realistic (it’s a tiny kitchen), with the menu listing three or four small courses, including good pasta. Wine – red or white - comes in a carafe that is chockers with stone fruit. Drink the wine, then eat the drunken fruit as dessert. It’s not an entirely comfortable experience, but then, this is Kings Cross. Being comfortable has nothing to do with anything.

OUT & ABOUT:

GRAPE GARDEN, KINGS CROSS.

Dropped into Grape Garden, the no-frills, family-run Kings Cross eatery with tables on the street that won the Oceania Cruises Service Excellence Award in the Good Food Guide Awards 2026 (announced in October 2025) for Ecca Zhang.

Zhang has a nice tableside manner, crouching by the table, chatting through dishes, bringing ice for drinks. It’s BYO ($10 bottle), so he can’t get too service-oriented with wine – but I enjoy his routine of wandering off with the empty bottle and dumping it crash-bang into the rubbish bin on the street.

The dumplings are good – northern-style, thick of skin, boiled – and the hand-pulled thick noodles; other dishes leave me unmoved. Nice to see the legendary chef Janni Kyritsis there with friends – he goes, he says, for the Peking duck, which requires a pre-order, and looks terrific.

LE DOYENNÉ AT BESSIE’S

James Henry grew farm-to-table restaurant Le Doyenné from the ground up with fellow chef Shaun Kelly. It’s a romantic place in a converted barn on palace grounds an hour from Paris, with its own kitchen garden. So when he did a fleeting pop-up in January with his mates at Bessie’s, he’s like “where’s the farm? Where’s the garden?” (Not entirely sure he realised he was in Surry Hills). A big trip to Newcastle Greens saved the day - and the legendary crudite platter. A brilliant night, fabulous food - herbal, vegetal, natural - and for me, a rehearsal before heading off to Le Doyenné in April. Cannot wait.

CAFÉ MARGARET

Who on earth puts raspberry jam in a bacon toasty? Neil Perry’s Dad did, apparently, and it’s now on the menu of Café Margaret for your Double Bay breakfast needs. Thick and jammy melds with crisp and salty. Crazy stuff, but hey, we put cranberry sauce on turkey without blinking. And in the spirit of this month’s recurring theme – who says you can’t?

Time to sign off for January; thanks for joining me. Thanks also to Hugh Stewart for my cutlery-clenching portrait, and to JD for the food pics, and Nikki To for Flaminia and Jack Fenby for Rick Stein at Coogee. As always, noted when hosted. If it isn’t noted, I’ve paid my way.

Leave a comment below, but only if it’s nice. And hit the subscribe button below to get the next report in your inbox, last Friday of the month. Until then. Thanks, Terry.