Maxim Boon

There is a lot to get excited about on the streets of Sydney at the moment. The calibre of restaurants making their grand debuts is nothing short of awe-inspiring. While there are myriad restaurants to choose from in our fair city, we've picked our brains and put together a short-list of the ones we think should be top of your hit list.  We hope you're hungry Sydney. Looking for something to wash it all down with? These are the best bars in Sydney right now.

First, there were food courts. Then came the food truck revolution. But these days, it's precincts that rule Sydney's culinary scene. In recent years – with a notable boom in the past 12 months, in particular – the Harbour City has experienced a veritable precinct-palooza, as curated collectives of venues and multi-eatery hospo hubs have popped up all over town. These one-stop solutions for dining and drinking adventures combine quality and convenience in a single destination, either within an easily walkable enclave or simply all under one roof. Here’s the lowdown on some of the best of the bunch. Prefer to find your venues one at a time? Check out our pick of the very best new restaurants in Sydney right now.

If you're bored to the back teeth at staring at the same ol' Sydney skyline, we reckon it’s about time you levelled-up your vista. Just cop an eyeful of these breathtaking sights in and around Sydney, then start planning your next day trip to behold them IRL. If you only have eyes for Sydney, here are the best places to view the city’s iconic skyline.

Mother Nature sure did bless Sydney with an abundance of beauty. Look, beaches! Over there, parklands! And hubba hubba, how about that harbour? But head out in just about any direction beyond the city limits and you’ll find natural attractions that put Sydney’s citybound sights to shame. We’ve cherry-picked a selection of the state's most beautiful nature spots that you can visit in a day and be back home by bedtime. So grab some supplies, some sun cream, and your sense of adventure and get into it. Admire NSW from behind the wheel on one of these beautiful scenic drives.

Borders are once again open, Australia has reopened to the world. But if you're not feeling all that into being stuck on a plane for hours on end, there are some great alternatives to long-haul travel right here in NSW. With such a diverse spectrum of climates and terrains, you can still get a taste of the world without ever leaving the state. Here are six places where you can feel like you’re overseas in your own backyard. Want more local travel inspo? Check out these top short getaways near Sydney.

We might be a little biased, but in our humble opinion, Sydney's got it all. Few cities in the world can rival its natural beauty, its rich heritage and history that dates back thousands of years, and its creative, culinary and cultural offerings by world-class pros. In fact, there's so much to see, do, sip and chew here, you could be forgiven for feeling a little overwhelmed. But worry not, dear reader – we're here to help. We've sifted through every good time the Big Smoke has to offer to put together a Sydney bucket list for the ages: Time Out's ultimate pick of the essential Sydney experiences you have to try in 2022. Whether you're a new arrival or a born-and-bred local, this round-up of the city's must-do activities will let you experience Sydney from every angle. After all those great activities you're bound to be thirsty. We suggest you head to one of the best bars in Sydney right now. 

Melbourne may pride itself on its Italian heritage, but Sydney is no slacker when it comes to Italian food. We have amazing delis, high-end purveyors of pasta and a raft of gelato and pastry shops that will keep you riding high on sugar all year long. But it's our pizza game that shines brightest. We know a thing or two about what it takes to make excellent pizza and these are the places that are topping the class with their pies. Hungry for more? Here's our pick of the very best restaurants in Sydney right now.

Just because you (or someone you love) can't physically get themselves out to a luxe dessert location doesn't mean your, or their, sweet teeth should suffer. Whether you want a spectacular finish to your meal, to send someone a perfect artisan donut after a rough day on the books,  or – just simply want to eat your own feelings in front of the TV, these top-tier dessert slingers will deliver a sweet treat directly to your door.  Give your drinks cart a glow up with these sensational bottled cocktails from top Sydney bars. Doughnuts from Short Stop There’s a certain appeal of a classic strawberry iced doughnut that tastes like childhood, but at Short Stop they are slinging doughnuts designed for more adult palates. We’re talking the bittersweet flavour of bergamot in the Earl Grey icing or the sharpness of cardamom in the classic cinnamon sugar ring. Order up an adventurous selection and get them delivered to you via Deliveroo. A brownie slab from Baked by Blonde Butler Alex Cadger's boutique catering operation is now offering a particularly sweet way to say 'I love you' to a special someone in lockdown. And plot twist, that special someone can also be yourself. The fully customisable brownie slabs not only come decked out with all manner of lip-smacking extras – think chunks of Toblerone, whole Oreo cookies and succulent cherries – you can also include a message, spelled out in edible chocolate letters.  Lamingtons from Tokyo Lamington Stale shreds of desiccated coconut and

After a year of staying put, you're probably feeling that holiday itch, but as it currently stands, overseas travel is unlikely to resume for at least a year. You can of course go on an interstate hop, but don't overlook the wealth of holiday options you've got in your own backyard. Sydney has some of the finest guestrooms in the country, offering plush, luxe, thoroughly bougie comforts and indulgent experiences worthy of a staycation. We've picked out some of our favourites within Greater Sydney that are ready and waiting to take your booking. Looking for a room that's a little more out of the ordinary? Check out the most unusual places to stay in NSW.

According to the latest census, published on June 28, Millennials are now rivaling Boomers as the largest generation in Australia. So, now that this demo is all grown up, it's worth taking a stroll down memory lane to remember all of the classic good times we used to love back in the day when we weren't quite as adult as we are now. Join us on this nostalgic look back at all the venues and experiences in Sydney that made our teens and twenties so damn good. In search of a fun time right now? Check out these top dancefloors in Sydney. Goodgod Small Club (2010-2015) It looked like a party bar from the Flintstones, the drinks were brightly coloured, there were hot dogs on the menu, and out the back, the band room hosted some of the most varied and exciting parties in Sydney. It’s where you’d go for some late night Dutty Dancing, a Beyoncé dance class, quality pop culture trivia and unforgettable live gigs. Photograph: Supplied Q Bar (1993-2015) The giant Exchange Hotel venue sprawled along Oxford Street, with Spectrum, Nevada, 34B, and Q Bar all providing a perch for every kind of night owl that existed. But it’s the raging nights at Q Bar we miss the most. The Monorail (1988-2013) Look, it might not have been the most practical form of transport, but we miss the quiet train looping above the city like a silver snake constantly chasing its own tail from Darling Harbour up to the CBD and back again. Purple Sneakers at the Abercrombie Hotel (2006-2010) The party that united indi

While there are plenty of reasons to love Sydney, there are an equal number of things that are annoying about life in the Harbour City, from the exxy rental prices to the number of cockroaches. But just imagine if by some blast of gamma rays or the bite from a radioactive bin chicken you could be imbued with fantastical abilities to solve all your Sydney foibles? Here are some of the amazing superpowers that we reckon would make living in Sydney just a little bit easier. Madame Mould Powers: spore destruction. Is that patch of black mould in your bathroom getting you down? Fed up with finding your winter wardrobe covered in a cocoon of furry-green yuckiness? Never fear, Madame Mould is here to banish all your fungal foes. Never again will you need to live under the tyranny of those stubborn black blotches on your ceiling, no matter how damp your house gets. The Avo Avenger Powers: busting down the price of a house. Are you over Boomers scoffing about the price of avo on toast when you complain about how insane house prices are? Not on the Avo Avenger’s watch. No real estate agent or auctioneer can resist their powers of depreciation. Watch as zeros vanish from the asking prices of a Surry Hills terrace or a Mosman mansion. Armed only with his trustee property ladder, the Avo Avenger is here to help you get some bricks and mortar without having to be a literal millionaire. Space Invader Powers: fitting any vehicle into the tiny bit of space at the end of any parking zone. If

Crustless cucumber sandwiches, scones with jam and cream and tiered plates of petit fours.  Sydney loves a pinky-lifting high tea, and with good reason. Once you've got baked goodies, tea selections for every palate and beautiful surrounds – maybe harbour views, like at the Mosman Barracks, or cultivated gardens at historic Vaucluse House – you've got all the elements of an aspirational afternoon of ever-so fancy leisure. In search of another sugar high? Here's where to find Sydney's best doughnuts.

Newcastle might not have ranked highly on many people’s list of dream getaways in the past, but don’t be too quick to count out NSW’s much-maligned second city. Sydney’s cousin to the north is in the midst of a major tourism renaissance, and you don’t have to just take our word for it. The arrival of one of Australia’s best luxury boutique hotel brands clearly signals that Newie’s stock is on the rise. This is the first addition to QT’s five-star portfolio since opening its Perth outpost in 2018. Breathing new life into the 113-year-old, heritage-listed former David Jones building, QT Newcastle is one of the centrepieces of the $700 million revitalisation of Newcastle’s city centre around the main drag of Hunter Street. The vibe of the 104-key hotel is luxury but with QT’s trademark whimsy, clearly pitched at a clientele who value the attention to detail and refinement of five-star service but without the stuffy formality and cookie-cutter style of larger hotel chains. Designer Nic Graham has created a joyously maximalist aesthetic that celebrates the elements that are so much a part of Newcastle’s identity: the water of its marina; the fire of its once-thriving steel industry; the earth of the city’s rugged coastline; and the air of the wide-open skies where the Hunter River meets the Pacific.  Throughout its rooms and suites, you’ll find just the slightest of industrial winks to the Steel City’s past in the brushed copper side tables and metal cage wardrobes, but this is co

Sydneysiders love a gin festival, so it was cause for celebration indeed when Junipalooza, one of the world's premier gin fests and already a familiar fixture in Melbourne, announced it would be coming to the Harbour City for the first time in 2020. But then along came the spicy cough, which put pay to those plans. Things looked promising for a second attempt in 2021, until an unlucky flight attendant's dose of Delta thrust much of the nation back into lockdown just weeks before the festivities. But now that it's 2022, a thoroughly vaxed and Covid-normal acclimatised Sydney is finally ready for its first Junipalooza at Carriageworks, on August 27-28, and if that's not a tonic for this city's gin lovers, we don't know what is. An all-killer-no-filler lineup of more than 30 craft distilleries will be on deck with gins of every conceivable variety, from toe-curling bathtub and Navy Strength brews to delicate and complex pink and spiced varieties, bursting with botanicals. The heavyweights of Australia's booming gin industry will of course be in attendance – Archie Rose, Melbourne Gin Co, Four Pillars, and Poor Toms, to name a few – but there will also be many smaller artisan brands too, like micro-distilleries Banks & Solander, Happenstance and Taylor and Smith.  This meet-the-maker style expo is the perfect window on the passion and expertise that goes into a really top-shelf bottle of boutique gin where you can get the real lowdown on the provenance and production process stra

Sure, there’s no shortage of ramen joints in Sydney, but this fresh arrival at the Star is the only one where Wagyu beef takes centre stage. This premium Ozaki beef is sourced from a single farm in Miyazaki Prefecture, and given Mashi No Mashi is brought to us by the team behind Tokyo’s legendary Wagyumafia, you can be sure these hand-picked cuts are worthy of dominating an entire menu. It’s the hero of all five signature ramens, showcased in a variety of forms. There’s the tokusei tsukemen, the house speciality, which instead of soup, comes paired with a thick, umami-laden, collagen-rich beef broth for dipping your noods. Spice it up with a ‘samurai bomb’ made from a togarashi-infused ball of beef fat if you dare. But if soup is what you seek, the Wagyujiro features a silken Ozaki beef-bone broth that’s imported from Japan for maximum authenticity. The house noodles are a gloriously thick, dense udon cut, the perfect landing pad for thick slices of eight-hour stewed Wagyu that celebrates this meat’s melt-in-the-mouth marbling.  The sides are also a bovine bonanza, including a Wagyu variant of that most faithful of ramen sidekicks, the pan-fried gyoza, and there’s even a slight detour to neighbouring China, courtesy of Wagyu char siu bao, dressed with mushroom jam and a tinge of wasabi to bring us back to the land of the rising sun. You can wash it all down with Mashi No Mashi’s very own canned Highballs – a wink to Japan’s love affair with whisky.  The cute 50-seater restaur

Is bigger really better? The good folks at Fun Lab certainly think so. Two new epic additions to their entertainment hub in Alexandria are bringing the good times on a whole new scale. Right next door to the HiJinx Hotel, the world’s first challenge room venue, and the ever-popular Archie Bros Cirque Electriq, is the nation’s largest indoor mini-golf arena, featuring 27 pun-tastic novelty putt-putt holes spread across three madcap courses.  Fans of Holey Moley, which now boasts 18 venues across five states, will be familiar with the whimsical wordplay and bonkers concepts that are the stock and trade of this popular putt-putt franchise, but at this expansive new location, the fun has been dialled up to eleven. Set in a warehouse with a soaring 14-meter ceiling height, game designers have really been able to think big, delivering some showstopping holes that really need to be seen to be believed – including a 10-metre tall poop emoji (no really), a gigantic recreation of the board game Mousetrap, and a huge TV game show set, just to name a few. There are also plenty of new innovations that up the ante, like a money-grab wind machine and a whole futuristic UV section where players putt under a black light. For those who really want the let the good times roll, Holey Moley offers party packages, but even if you’re just popping by for a quick 9 holes with some mates, it’s worth swinging by the in-house bar and restaurant. It's slinging a range of signature cocktails and sandwiche

It was once the case that Sydneysiders in search of Mexican eats had to largely content themselves with Tex-Mex, burrito-centric, fast-casual chains, save for a handful of mom-and-pop outfits and food trucks here and there. With nothing but foil-wrapped logs of mass-batched ingredients and hours-old meat to go on (added guac for an extra dollar), local expectations of Mexican cuisine were duly low. Those high street burrito joints still exist, of course, and they serve their purpose. But thanks to a relatively recent influx of eateries elevating Mexican fare to new authentic heights, flavours from south of the border have gone from siesta to fiesta in Sydney.  And it’s not just the food that has undergone a glow-up, as Tommy’s in Darlinghurst proves. Part of this new local vanguard of more aspirational Mexican venues, you won’t find a piñata, sombrero or Lucha Libre mask anywhere in sight at Tommy’s. Gone are the eye-popping paint jobs and stereotypical Mexicana that were once mandatory decor, replaced with an elegantly stripped-back design of simple cream walls, exposed brickwork behind the bar and a tasteful floral mural in the front dining room. It’s a welcome departure from the cookie-cutter playacting that once tried to compensate for 'meh' food with ¡Ay, caramba! aesthetics.  However, the Tommy’s team has been careful not to throw out the proverbial baby with the bathwater. The menu still leans heavily on staples of Mexican cuisine that are familiar (and popular), but e

Fans of Five Guys speak about the burgers of this popular US chain with the kind of breathless reverence usually reserved for far fancier gourmet fare. And yes, to the casual observer it may look like any other fast-casual joint. However, Five Guys’ clever choose-your-own-adventure menu stands it apart from other American-style diners.  Once you’ve selected the number of patties you want and if you want to add cheese and bacon, every punter is given free rein of 15 other toppings and condiments to pimp out their burg any way they want for no additional charge. And with so many garnishes, sauces and other yummy inclusions to choose from – including lesser-available options like grilled mushrooms, fresh jalapeños and A1 steak sauce – there are more than 250,000 possible combinations.   All the produce on offer is high quality, locally sourced and fresh, never frozen. Visitors will even find signs in the restaurant to let them know where the beef in the burgers and potatoes for the fries have come from on any particular day. The skin-on fries, which are cut in-house, are served up with a devil-may-care generosity that would make Ronald McDonald and Hungry Jack wince, and all soda orders – and much like the toppings, there are a huge variety of options, including rarities like Vanilla Coke and Raspberry Fanta – are bottomless. Not a burger fan? There are also four hot dog options and four toasted sandwiches, which punters can similarly customise with their choice of toppings. And

You’ve no doubt heard of smash rooms, splash rooms and escape rooms. Well, now Sydneysiders are the first people in the world to get up close and personal with ‘challenge rooms’. Plucked from the madcap minds of the team at Funlab, the creators of popular mini-golf chain Holey Moley and Sydney’s new augmented reality darts bar La Di Darts, Hijinx Hotel is a brand new concept that pairs silly good times with a competitive edge.  As you enter the space, visitors find themselves in an eye-popping, Art Deco meets Willy Wonka hotel lobby complete with its own neon-lit cocktail lounge. To be clear, this is all simply theatrics rather than reality – as the Hijinx Hotel tagline explains; you come here to play, not stay. Once you’ve ‘checked-in’ at the concierge desk, you’ll be guided to a fantastical elevator that bucks and jiggles its way to a corridor of very special hotel rooms.  Each of the 15 rooms contains a unique, highly physical game, conjured with vibrant, immersive whimsy. Swim in a giant cereal bowl ball pit, tiptoe around a floor of lava, or enter a neon polka dot universe or an old-timey carnival – no two rooms are the same. You’ll have just four minutes in each game to earn as many points as you can and be ready to feel the pressure because this hotel has a voice and it’s not afraid to up the stress levels when your time is running out.  Visitors can opt to play five, ten or all 15 games, with the full course taking about two and half hours to complete. Each of the ind

Between the first rickety flight of aviation pioneers the Wright brothers, and Neil Armstrong’s historic giant leap for mankind on the Moon, is a gap of just 66 years. And yet, despite the mind-boggling speed with which humanity went from earthbound to astronomical, the Apollo program, which took the first people to the lunar surface, was cancelled just over a year after its inaugural Moon landing. These extraordinary feats of engineering and courage had become too passé to hold the public’s attention. Well, for anyone still under the illusion that space is boring, a new immersive exhibition is ready to prove that there’s nothing dull about space exploration. Presented by Fever, this dazzling light show will transport you on a planet-hopping odyssey through our solar system, including visiting Mars, Venus, Pluto and Jupiter, with your feet still firmly on the ground. In orbit around these cosmic projections, visitors can find real space paraphernalia from notable missions including spacesuits supplied by NASA, as well as model spacecraft and interactive touchscreen displays for an even more detailed journey through the cosmos. While the exhibition has toured internationally, with more than a million people worldwide having seen the show to date, it's the first time the production will be shown in Melbourne.  The Melbourne premiere of Neighbourhood Earth will have a limited season at the Emporium from June 17 to August 28. Tickets are $30 per person and are on sale now through

It’s Christmas for Potterheads. Three years after its celebrated opening at the expensively refurbished Princess Theatre, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is taking an apt step back in time with a second premiere, this time of a streamlined one-play version that carves a good three hours off of its original running time. There are various motivations for this. Even for ardent devotees or seasoned theatre veterans, six hours in a seat is a slog, and once killed-for tickets had become readily available. But what could have been a cynical hatchet job has turned out to be the making of this show. The main pillars of the story remain – picking up where JK Rowling’s novels ended, we meet the children of famed wizard Harry Potter as they depart for Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. However, the enduring friendships that kept Harry alive are elusive for Harry’s awkward son Albus, and when he fails to live up to the towering expectations of not just his school but the entire wizarding world, his sole friendship becomes both his greatest refuge and his biggest vulnerability. But while you might reasonably assume that this is a play about magic, you’d be wrong. This is a play about love. Which should come as no surprise – love is quite literally the most powerful, death-defying force in JK Rowling’s seven-book saga. What is surprising however, is how one of the greatest juggernaut fiction franchises of all time has leaned – comfortably, credibly, with heart-rending sensitivit

In early June of 2020, playwright and actor Meyne Wyatt delivered a performance on ABC’s Q&A that was hailed as a watershed wake-up call to the reductive ways First Nations people are misrepresented and commodified through the white gaze. This blazing monologue, an excerpt from City of Gold, became an instant viral moment, not only for the content's raw truth but also for its delivery's gut-punch power. But as urgent and sobering as this speech is in isolation, it gains an extra dimension of emotional heft within the context of the story from which it's lifted. Wyatt’s debut play, which premiered in 2019 at Sydney’s Griffin Theatre before touring across the country, offers the experience of a grieving family as the microcosm to unlock a much broader discussion about identity and discrimination. Preservation of culture, the struggle to hold onto country and community, and the myriad entrenched systems of violence and mistreatment faced by First Nations people are brought into harrowing focus through the fractious relationship of three siblings struggling to cope in the wake of their father’s death. The play opens with a warped vision of Aboriginality, a figment of colonial myth that still persists as true blue Australiana today. Breythe Black (Wyatt) is an actor on the set of an ad promoting lamb for Australia Day barbies, spear in hand and a canoe at his feet. While the storyline claims to be about unity and reconciliation, its hamfisted imagery is offensively white-washed. B

Today, Surry Hills is known as the bougie heart of Sydney’s inner suburbs, a place where artisan bakeries, single-o coffee roasters and independent boutiques line leafy streets and rental prices reach the edge of space. But this wasn’t always so. The neighbourhood has gone through many eras, from its inglorious years as the crime-riddled slums of the 1920s when the rag trade and razor gangs ruled the roost, to the bohemian artist influx of the ‘60s, the emergence of the gay solidarity movement in the ‘70s, and its blossoming into the multicultural melting pot of Surry Hills today.  This rich history of social and aesthetic evolution has been the inspiration behind the design of the Ace Hotel Sydney, the first of this luxury accommodation brand’s Australian outposts. Situated in the renovated and extended Tyne House brick factory, the site of Australia’s first industrial ceramics kiln, the 264-key hotel will also feature a ground-floor all-day eatery, a lobby cocktail lounge and a rooftop restaurant and bar. Flack Studios, the interior design team behind the hotel’s fit-out, have summoned various design epochs via the custom lighting, joinery and furnishings in every room without the combined effect becoming an overt pastiche. The ochres and greens of the bedding and window seats, the acoustic textured walls and terracotta bathroom tiles channel distinctly retro vibes, but the attention to detail and in-room amenities are firmly planted in the 21st-century. According to David

Hiding within an unassuming office block in the heart of the CBD is a portal to another world – well, several in fact. It’s just a short elevator ride to the basement complex of escape rooms at Next Level, the brainchildren of co-owners Daniel Thomason and Aaron Hooper, where you can pit your wits against some of the most inventive brainteasers in the city.  Sydneysiders have a fair few escape room experiences to choose from but what sets Next Level’s apart is the clever ways its rooms amp up the theatricality, making the gameplay even more immersive and exciting. This is especially true in its most difficult room to date. An ancient, otherworldly object has been uncovered by the CIA, and your team of investigators has been tasked with unlocking its secrets – the latest conscripts to make such an attempt following the eerie disappearance of the agents who first tangled with the alien device. But where did it come from? What does it want? How will you unriddle its mysteries? You’ll have just 75 minutes to answer these questions and more, but don’t worry, you’ll also have a not-at-all deranged, totally not moody AI system with an inexplicable vendetta against Tasmania to help you. Immediately, the attention to detail in the room’s design transports us to a world of sci-fi intrigue, as you receive your first instructions in the decontamination chamber. The best escape rooms know how to gradually up the ante as the game evolves, and this is brilliantly achieved here with the disc

It’s a tale as old as time, but the Australian premiere of Disney Theatrical’s Broadway blockbuster Beauty and the Beast is getting a thoroughly modern makeover ahead of its debut at Sydney’s Capitol Theatre in June 2023. Securing the first Australian showing of this new production continues Sydney’s winning streak of bagging the premiere seasons of major international shows, including first Down Under outings of Broadway blockbuster Hamilton, Disney’s smash-hit stage adaptation of Frozen and most recently, the massively popular Moulin Rouge. Beauty and the Beast is one of Disney Theatrical’s most successful productions. Since opening on Broadway in 1994, it has toured to more than 40 countries around the world and has been seen by 35 million people to date. The original Broadway production came to Melbourne’s Princess Theatre in 1996, starring Hugh Jackman as Gaston, Bert Newton as Cogsworth and Rachel Beck as Belle. The production coming to Sydney has been updated using state-of-the-art stage tech and will feature new costumes and set. Olivier Award nominee Matt West will direct and choreograph, while the original creative team, including titans of the musical theatre world like lyricist Tim Rice, costume designer Ann Hould-Ward and composer Alan Menken, have been assembled to reimagine the show for a 21st-century audience. NSW premier Dominic Perrottet said that more than 400,000 people are expected to see the show when it opens next winter adding: “Bringing blockbuster mu

For 15 years, sushi seekers could find some of the best contemporary Japanese eateries in town in the heart of Surry Hills. However, Toko’s sprawling restaurant on Crown Street closed its doors for good earlier this year, with unconfirmed plans to relocate. Now, it’s been officially announced that a new venue has been secured in the CBD and will be welcoming its first diners in September. Sydneysiders who know and loved the Toko of old can expect to find their favourite dishes on the menu, although the new digs will also come with some new additions to the offering courtesy of owner Matt Yazbek and head chef Sunil Shrestha. But make no mistake, this new chapter for the restaurant is most definitely Toko 2.0. The new 330qm venue, designed by architect Matt Darwon who created the aesthetic for the original Toko, will feature seating for 100 including a 16-patron private dining room, a robata grill, a sushi bar offering omakase, and will stay open beyond 10pm for late-night dining. An exact date for the opening is yet to be announced, so keep your eyes peeled for further details in the coming weeks. In the meantime, check out these awesome Japanese restaurants in Sydney.

More details have been revealed about the first Australian outpost for the legendary luxury hotel brand the Waldorf Astoria. It was already known that the new five-star accommodations would be located at 1 Alfred Street, otherwise known as Gold Fields House, which has sat unused on one of the most coveted real estate locations in Australia, by Circular Quay, since 2018, when a fire gutted a previous development project on the site. Now it’s been announced that the latest holder of the deeds, Lendlease, has partnered with Mitsubishi Estate Asia to realise a $3 billion venture to transform the 4,000-square-metre block currently on the footprint into one of Australia’s best luxury hotels. The Waldorf Astoria Sydney will boast uninterrupted views of Sydney Cove, the Opera House and Harbour Bridge, and it will be the latest major development to join a roster of upgrade projects that include pedestrianising part of the Cahill Expressway and updating the ferry wharves at Circular Quay. The hotel will be designed by Kengo Kuma & Associates and feature 220 rooms, as well as in-house restaurants and bars. A second tower will also be constructed on the site at 1 Alfred Street, designed by Australian architect Kerry Hill, and will feature luxury residences spread over 59 levels. It is expected to open early in 2025. Want a luxurious stay now? Check in to one of Sydney's very best luxury hotels.

After two soggy summers in a row, not to mention some of the most widespread flooding on record, hopes were raised at the end of June when the Bureau of Meteorology announced that the La Niña weather event behind relentless downpours in 2020 and 2021 had officially ended. However, it now seems that this welcome declaration might have been premature and what’s more, the rains might well continue for another 12 months. This would make the current La Niña a three-year event, which isn’t unheard of – Australia has recorded three such triple La Niñas since 1950. The conditions that drive this pattern of weather – increased rainfall driven by warmer waters pushed down from the equator by the trade winds, especially during the Southern Hemisphere summer – had appeared to wane in late June as Pacific Ocean temperatures began dropping. However, increased trade winds in the West Pacific threaten to trigger the sequence of conditions that create the kind of excessively wet summer the east coast has endured for the past two years. Latest Indian Ocean Dipole value is the lowest since Sep 2016. We can probably call it now, 2022 will be a -IOD year. The value needs to remain below -0.4 for 8 weeks to make it official. Why does this matter? The rain is here to stay. @SkyWeatherAUS @SkyNewsAust pic.twitter.com/OHZkOkJkZW — Thomas Saunders (@TomSaundersSNW) July 11, 2022 Meteorologist Thomas Saunders took to Twitter to share the suspicious wind movements over the Pacific region that might

After two-and-a-half years of painstaking and science-backed renovations, the Sydney Opera House’s Concert Hall is finally ready to welcome back concertgoers. More than $190 million has been invested in the top-to-bottom glow-up of the heritage-listed venue to improve its famously bad acoustics and increase accessibility to the entire footprint of the hall.  Due to corner-cutting in an effort to deflate ballooning construction costs, a move which resulted in the Opera House’s visionary architect, Jorn Utzon, walking away from the project before its completion, Australia’s most iconic building has had notoriously flawed acoustics since its opening in 1973. While its external appearance has become one of the most recognisable structures ever built, the dull, splashy, uneven performance conditions in the Concert Hall have been a source of frustration for many artists who have come to Sydney over the past five decades. Giant perspex ‘doughnuts’ were installed above the concert platform in the ‘90s to adjust the acoustics, but these had to be manually winched, meaning changes in set-up, from an acoustic performance to an amplified one, for example, could take several days to complete. Photograph: Anna KuceraThe Concert Hall upgrades in progress The recently completed renovations have not only fixed these issues but have exceeded the expectations of the acousticians and engineers behind the upgrades. The perspex doughnuts have been replaced by 18 computer-controlled sound-reflect

In the last few months, everything's gotten a tad more expensive. Coffees are $5, cabbages are $9, and let's not even talk about the price of petrol these days. The inflation crisis truly takes no prisoners, and sadly that also applies to the humble Bunnings sausage snag.  For the first time in 15 years, the price of a snag is going up in price from $2.50 to $3.50 – a whopping 40 per cent hike. The price increase comes into effect from July 23 and comes in response to feedback from the community groups the beloved sausage sizzle supports. Because of the increased cost of goods, the revenue the B-sizz was pulling in just wasn’t enough to meet the financial burdens faced by local charities. What won’t change, however, is that every cent raised by Bunnings will continue to go to the not-for-profits it supports, so don’t be too salty with the fine folks cooking up the snags when you find yourself fishing around your pockets for another gold coin. Hungry for a next-level sanga? These are the very best sandwiches in Melbourne.

There are many things Sydney does well: beaches, famous landmarks, sunny skies and ‘grammable vistas (when a monster La Niña isn’t drenching us, that is), to name just a few. But according to the latest Time Out Index results, making friends is not one of them. Out of 53 world cities, Sydney was ranked as the third-worst on the planet for making new friends.  Almost three-quarters of respondents said that making new friends was either hard or impossible in Sydney, but there were two other cities that ranked even more poorly than here. Coming in second to last place was the Danish capital Copenhagen, and the world’s worst place for making new mates was just next door, in the Swedish capital of Stockholm. Sydneysiders are also starved for more intimate connections, it seems, with 71 per cent of those surveyed saying Sydney was a hard place to hook up, although Singapore, Stockholm and Porto, Portugal's second city, all ranked lower when it came to Netflix but no chill.  For the second year in a row, Sydney was also ranked as having the second-worst nightlife in the world, no doubt a hangover of negative feels from the bad ol’ days of the lockout laws, although this is an improvement on 2020's dire results with Sydney in dead last place when it came to good times after dark. Sydney's nightlife-choking lockout laws were finally repealed in February 2021, so we are glad to see Sydneysiders noticing a marked improvement in late-night offerings. It wasn’t all bad news for the NSW ca

It seems the inflation crisis truly takes no prisoners. For the first time in 15 years, that most wholesome of Aussie eats, the humble Bunning’s sausage sanga, is going up in price, from $2.50 to $3.50 – a whopping 40 per cent hike. The price increase comes into effect from July 23 in response to feedback from the community groups the beloved sausage sizzle supports.  Because of the increased cost of goods, the revenue the B-sizz was pulling in just wasn’t enough to meet the financial burdens faced by local charities. What won’t change, however, is that every cent raised by Bunnings will continue to go to the not-for-profits it supports, so don’t be too salty with the fine folks cooking up the snags when you find yourself fishing around your pockets for another gold coin. Hungry for a next-level sanga? These are the very best sandwiches in Sydney.

There was once a time not so long ago when even a handful of positive Covid-19 cases would be headline news, but since the summer of Omicron, Aussies have adjusted their expectations to live with Covid as the new normal. However, experts are now warning that we might be getting a little too comfortable with the idea of the virus spreading unchecked in the community. What is the 'winter surge'? Both state and federal health experts are sounding the alarm that a significant surge in cases over the winter period could push Australia’s hospital systems to breaking point. Cases are already climbing nationwide thanks to the double whammy of people gathering more frequently indoors during the colder months and the increasing dominance of the wildly communicable Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5. These subvariants have thrown yet another curve ball at current containment strategies. Available vaccines are less effective against BA4. and BA.5. and someone who has previously been infected with these subvariants can catch them again just four weeks after recovery, according to recent research. This has underscored the importance of masks and social distancing despite almost all previously mandated health restrictions having been lifted. Why are health restrictions being discussed again? Health experts like the federal chief health officer professor Paul Kelly and NSW chief health officer Dr Kerry Chant are recommending that businesses reinstitute working from home where possible and tha

Thank goodness the pandemic is finally over, right? Not quite. While almost every health protocol put in place to protect the community from the spread of Covid-19 has been lifted, tens of thousands of cases continue to be reported, with daily totals on the rise thanks to two highly contagious subvariants of the Omicron variant, which are becoming dominant across the country.  Australia can be proud that it has one of the most widely vaccinated populations anywhere on the planet, but research has shown that just two doses of a vaccine are ineffective against Omicron, and the immunity gained from a third booster dose of a vaccine wanes after six months.  To protect the most vulnerable people in our community, a fourth dose of a vaccine has been recommended for people aged over 65 since March, but now, to address a spike in cases among younger Australians, the government immunisation advice body ATAGI has approved a fourth jab for anyone aged over 30 in Australia, effective from Monday, July 11. This will grant access to a fourth dose to more than 7.4 million people, although if you've had Covid-19 since receiving your booster (third) shot, you will have to wait until three months after you acquired the infection before getting jab four. Fourth jabs, like booster doses, are not mandatory. Prime minister Anthony Albanese is also pushing for greater access to antiviral drugs and similar therapeutics in Australia, to help manage a labour shortage caused by a significant increase i

Thank goodness the pandemic is finally over, right? Not quite. While almost every health protocol put in place to protect the community from the spread of Covid-19 has been lifted, tens of thousands of cases continue to be reported, with daily totals on the rise thanks to two highly contagious subvariants of the Omicron variant, which are becoming dominant across the country.  Australia can be proud that it has one of the most widely vaccinated populations anywhere on the planet, but research has shown that just two doses of a vaccine are ineffective against Omicron, and the immunity gained from a third booster dose of a vaccine wanes after six months.  To protect the most vulnerable people in our community, a fourth dose of a vaccine has been recommended for people aged over 65 since March, but now, to address a spike in cases among younger Australians, the government immunisation advice body ATAGI has approved a fourth jab for anyone aged over 30 in Australia, effective from Monday, July 11. This will grant access to a fourth dose to more than 7.4 million people, although if you've had Covid-19 since receiving your booster (third) shot, you will have to wait until three months after you acquired the infection before getting jab four. Fourth jabs, like booster doses, are not mandatory. Prime minister Antony Albanese is also pushing for greater access to antiviral drugs and similar therapeutics in Australia, to help manage a labour shortage caused by a significant increase in

It’s probably fair to say that most Sydneysiders have had better weeks. A natural disaster is in progress; Covid, flu and ‘super cold’ cases are spiking; and we’re all feeling the pinch of the cost of living crisis. But thankfully there is one peril Sydney folk don’t have to worry about, despite what the internet might have to say about it. A pic has been doing the rounds on multiple social media sites and thread channels of a shark swimming in a flooded Sydney train station, and despite it looking pretty obviously fake to even the casual observer, it has nonetheless been given at least some credence by a few gullible people online – becoming one of the biggest Google Trends of the week so far. But needless to say, the picture is fake. It is, however, really a picture of the flooded Sydney train station, though not from today's floods – Lewisham station in the Inner West to be exact, which flooded following severe thunderstorms in 2014. And the alleged ‘Sydney Aquarium’ worker crouching in the doctored photo, who is supposed to be shark whispering we guess, is in fact an emergency worker manning a pump, which is also clearly visible in the photo. JUST IN: Lewisham Train Station in the Inner West of #Sydney has been flooded amid severe storms. #SydneyStorm pic.twitter.com/hWHGKu36VI — Australia News Network (@AusNewsNetwork) October 14, 2014 There are plenty of things to doom scroll about in Sydney as it is, but PT-lovin’ sharks ain’t one of them. But do you know where you