The Good Food team ate garlic bread to rule them all, hangover-curing noodles and deep-fried French snacks at a hatted CBD brasserie.
Good Food team
December 19, 2025
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Finding good food is a round-the-clock job, and a job the Good Food team is wholly devoted to. Breakfast, dessert, pre-dinner snacks, lunch on the run – we see every bite as a chance to discover something exceptional. We’ve combed our memories (and smartphone photo libraries) to bring you a list of our favourite dishes for 2025, all under $20.
A dinner-time spread at Olympic Meats.Max Mason-HubersThe chicken pitogyro at Olympic Meats, $20
On a visit to Olympic Meats in Marrickville this year, a friend suggested we skip the gyros and order a few dishes to share. I no longer invite that friend to Olympic Meats. I’m generally happy to split a couple of snack plates, but the chicken gyros – stuffed with smoky, juicy chicken marinated in garlic and sun-dried bukovo peppers with a jolt of lemon, shaved by hand from a rotisserie spit and folded with peppers and tzatziki into the deep, soft creases of a sourdough pita – are too good to miss. I’ll happily share the beef tallow-cooked chips though, since they’re big enough for two. Erina Starkey
Ricotta with local beetroots at Hey Rosey.Pip FarquharsonHugh’s ricotta with beetroot and rosemary from Hey Rosey, $18
In late spring at South End, Newtown, there was a $15 chilled almond, melon and cucumber ajo blanco soup – smooth as sea glass – that was perfect for those grey, humid days that make up too much of Sydney’s weather.
The feelgood of last summer was Shang Lamb’s $12.80 bowl of raggedy, flat noodles and spring onion in Hurstville, scalded with hot oil just before serving and thrumming with garlic and chilli.
But if I have to pick one dish, then it’s the confident, defined flavours of the beetroot and ricotta team-up at Hey Rosey wine bar in Orange. In deepest, darkest winter, chef Hugh Piper makes ricotta every second day and pairs it with poached local beetroot. Covered in the reduced poaching liquid enhanced with rosemary oil and apple cider vinegar, it’s precisely what you want to eat with a cool-climate pinot noir. Hey Rosey’s $18 comte and truffle tart is tremendous value, too. Callan Boys
Scallop and abalone beignets at The Charles.Scallop and abalone beignet from The Charles Grand Brasserie, $16
The king prawn roti at Island Radio. The baby abalone schnitzel at The Dining Room. The earth-shattering onion rings at The Bistro Coledale. High-spec fried snacks are everywhere. I’m tempted to throw in the $6 plate of tropical fruit at Pipit in Pottsville as a tonic, but instead let’s double down with the beignet that Billy Hannigan dreamed up at The Charles. Abalone is poached in brown butter, sliced thinly, then layered between slices of scallop. It’s dusted with seaweed, battered in pale ale, topped with a mustard-nori emulsion, then served in an abalone shell. A textural feat, indicative of the low-key brilliance Hannigan brings to the kitchen. Crunch. David Matthews
Dan dan noodles at Yan’s Kitchen in Waterloo.Kevin ChengDan dan noodles from Yan’s Kitchen, $15
Anthony Bourdain wasn’t wrong when he said Sichuan food was an essential part of a hangover cure. Handmade thin wheat noodles (the Chinese uncle at Yan’s in Waterloo feeds fresh dough through the roller), pork mince, preserved mustard greens, Sichuan peppercorns, chilli crisp, sesame paste, peanuts, broth and a generous slick of chilli oil. This is an ode to the original dan dan noodles with the numbing spice reverberating as the thick, spicy broth clings to each strand of noodle. The dish is different each time I eat here: sometimes the chilli oil is splashed on one half of the bowl – almost like a Sichuan yin-yang symbol. Kevin Cheng
Al Amara and its fresh tahini in Fairfield.Wolter PeetersSydney’s freshest tahini from Al Amara, from $6 a jar
Yes, one of the greatest things I consumed this year came straight from a jar. Al Amara is an Iraqi bakery in Fairfield that freshly mills tahini on site: the store is rich with fragrant clouds of roasted sesame, and you can watch two machines swirling the seeds to be churned into extraordinarily nutty tahini available fresh from the tap. You can even BYO jar to fill. Staff recommend enjoying the tahini with date syrup and bread for an Iraqi breakfast, but it’s so good on its own that I literally savour it with nothing more than a spoon. Lee Tran Lam
Garlic bread from Fontana, $5
I fell hard for this garlic bread when I demolished a roll for the first time in 2018 at the now-closed Don Peppino’s on Oxford Street. Not much has changed about it at its current home, one-hatted Fontana, where chef Daniel Johnston pipes rolls with hot caramelised garlic butter that gently oozes everywhere when you take a bite. Even bad garlic bread is good, but what transforms this into Sydney’s G.G.B.O.A.T. is the clever use of confit garlic and raw garlic, alongside oodles of butter and marjoram. My new year’s resolution is to revisit the Redfern restaurant and order three rolls and not share them with anyone. Sarah Norris
Wingello Village Store doubles as a cafe and post office. Jennifer SooChicken burger from Wingello Village Store and Post Office, $16
The best works burger in Australia may be found at an unassuming regional post office? Good Food Guide co-editor Callan Boys made that call earlier this year about Wingello Village Store and Post Office’s burger with the lot. The creation is “the perfect trinity of salty, sweet and lightly pickled”, he wrote, towering with free-range egg, canned beetroot, house-cured bacon and local beef on a soft, white bun from Bryant’s Bakery in Goulburn. I don’t doubt his claim, but for me, the chicken schnitzel burger calls every time. At Wingello, that means a 180-gram schnitzel served with mayo and locally sourced lettuce and tomato on the aforementioned bun. That’s it. No cheese, no greasy batter, no fuss. Just old-school freshness worth the country mile. Megan Johnston
Wonton soup with beef flank at Canton Noodle.Jennifer SooWonton and beef flank soup from Canton Noodle House, $17
On one of the coldest days of the year, I had the pleasure of visiting Canton Noodle House in Hurstville, which has been serving soul-soothing wonton soup since 1994. Upon entering, the downstairs area was sequestered by chefs to become a wonton-folding station. Upstairs, with the scent of tea wafting through the air, these freshly folded wontons arrived in my bowl, floating among fatty, tender beef flank in the clear, fragrant broth. The wontons themselves are full of bouncy jewels of prawn and pork. This an incredibly generous bowl. Isabel Cant
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