Six To Try: Sydney’s Best Fish Pies for Golden Crusts and Creamy, Fragrant Fillings

The beef pie is ubiquitous across Sydney. So is its less popular cousin, the chicken pie. The fish pie, though? It’s the relative that only shows up at family gatherings every couple of years, and no one can quite remember how they’re even related.

While we highly recommend Fish Butchery’s heat-and-serve blue-eye trevalla pie for home, here are six places you can get a steaming-hot fish or seafood pie served to your table. Often they’re made to order, meaning you’ll have to wait 30 minutes or more to crack that pastry lid. Well worth it, we say.

Spanner crab and fish pie at Eleven Barrack, Sydney

Plunging a knife through this decorative pastry crab feels wrong at first, but you’ll soon forget about it as you dig into the warm filling of sweet spanner crab, Murray cod, baby spinach, dijon and velouté. Use the accompanying boat of saffron, tomato and shellfish bisque however you see fit: poured into the pie as the restaurant suggests, as a pastry-dunking vessel, or maybe for sipping directly from. $68. 11 Barrack Street, Sydney.

Normandie fish pie at Bellevue Cottage by Antoine, Glebe

Normandy (or Normandie in French) is one of three regions along the English Channel, with the long tradition of seafood you’d expect – including a pie filled with white fish simmered in cream and cider or white wine, then topped with mashed potato. The longstanding version created by Bellevue Cottage’s namesake owner-chef, Antoine Moscovitz, is even more luxurious. It sees barramundi, leek, shiitake and truffle simmered in champagne and “scented” with crab. In place of mash, there’s a perfectly crosshatched pastry top. $42. 55 Leichhardt Street, Glebe.

Newlyn fish pie at Rick Stein, Coogee

Inspired by Newlyn, a tiny fishing town in Cornwall, Rick Stein’s pie features salmon, ling, monkfish, prawns, mussels and mushrooms cooked in a creamy, lemon-spiked seafood velouté. Panko breadcrumbs and parmesan make for a crunchy, textural top. (The recipe is also available if you’d like to make it at home.) $58. 242 Arden Street, Coogee.

Seafood pie at Felons Seafood, Manly

Eleven Barrack isn’t the only restaurant in town that knows how to add a bit of fun to a pie, as this Felons Seafood creation proves. Presented in a rustic cast iron pan with a charred fish tail poking from the centre, it features crimpy puff pastry edges and a creamy filling of fish, prawn, calamari, lemon and herbs. $42. West Esplanade, Manly.

Seafood pie at Fish at the Rocks, Millers Point

In business since 1988, this modest dining room does exactly as the name suggests. Order the boat-shaped seafood pie for a hit of prawns, scallop, ling and veggies in luscious bechamel sauce. The top is a puff pastry as classic as the restaurant’s interior, with its padded dark timber chairs and well-trod rugs. $54. 29 Kent Street, Millers Point.

Signature crust fish chowder at Jordon’s Seafood, Sydney

This article has thus far avoided the tricky question of whether a pot pie is really a pie, or just a stew with pastry on top. Darling Harbour restaurant Jordon’s seems to think not, branding its pie just chowder with a crust. No matter – you’re in for similar delights with unpeeled king prawns, mussels, seasonal fish and calamari in a spicy tomato-prawn bisque. Peel back the top and dig in. $49. Shop 6, 32 The Promenade, Sydney.