Queen Nigella Lawson’s in Sydney – Here’s Where She’s Been Eating

Nigella Lawson’s opinions on food are, quite simply, gospel. The celebrity chef and food writer has that homely, snacky way of eating down pat. And the way she talks about food – you can hear the feeling. She’s Down Under for Vivid Sydney.

After dining around Perth, she crossed the country, making a beeline for some of Sydney’s best dining rooms. Here’s where she’s been so far, what she ordered and what she thought.

Ester, Chippendale
“This time last week, I had the most wonderful meal of my life,” wrote Lawson of Ester, the Hot-Listed diner from chef Mat Lindsay. “I know I say it each time I go to Ester (and it’s always true) as each time is a fresh occasion for delight.” She began with “impeccable oysters” before moving on to “the now legendary fermented potato bread with salmon roe and a beguiling jelly-topped kefir cream; followed by madly good Sommerlad chicken dumplings, bulgingly plump and sensationally savoury in their rich, smoky broth”. She chased it with “exquisite pippies, in a liquid that tasted saltily like a gravy drunk on its own magnificent meatiness.” For dessert, she had a “superbly elegant but winkingly bright crèpe caramel.”

Lawson is such a fan that she says she’s already rebooked Ester for her last night in Sydney before going back to the UK.

Ante, Newtown
In May, Nigella Lawson commented on our ode to an Ante pasta, saying it was on her list. A week later, she was at the Hot-Listed Sydney restaurant ordering up a bowl.

“Boy, did I make the most of my visit to Ante last weekend,” her post began. “Ante is ostensibly a sleek, dark sake bar of uber chic hipness that is as much about the music as the drink and food. The friend I went with, knowing my aversion to noise (and I’m afraid I generally categorise music as noise) anxiously warned me, but there was nothing to mind on that front … even grandma here, who normally always asks for the volume to be turned down, was happy!

“And my ‘ostensibly’ above is just because, beyond all else, Ante is really a site of sensational food. Fried potato mochi were light as puffs and as meltingly dense as fondants (how that is possible, I don’t know). The chunkily chopped beef tartare with caramelised Jerusalem artichoke, smoky hazelnuts and a fluff of Comté cheese was, in equal parts, robust and exquisite. And then came the deep thrill of the pasta: casarecce with the sweetest prawns, peppy and aromatic kanzuri (a Japanese fermented chilli paste) and tang of pickled clementine, all bound in butter; and tagliatelle with fermented shiitake, again, velvety with butter. Charred baby leeks came in a bright, spiced sauce that made their smoky sweetness sing. The Murray cod with chicken fat (yes!) and spinach was so tenderly succulent (can’t avoid the word) contrasting with the almost austere, brittle crispness of its skin. Then came the melting, fatty richness of pork neck with vinegar-sharp, bitter puntarelle, salty with anchovy.”

King Clarence, CBD
“How could I leave here without tasting, once more, that Fish Finger Bao and still live with myself?” Lawson asked Instagram. Not a chance!”

With much to say about this Hot-Listed restaurant, her praise for that little snack was especially notable: “Barramundi, set in gelatinised dashi stock, then robustly crumbed, then deep-fried, so that when you bite into it as well as a satisfying crunch, you get a burst of deeply-flavoured broth. It’s rather like the experience of eating xiao long bao (aka soup dumplings) only more high octane.” There’s melty American cheese, a zingy tartare and salmon roe pearls, too.

Recipetin Eats’ Nagi Maehashi joined the praise, replying “Ha! I was trying to get in for tonight, they’re fully booked 😢 Glad you enjoyed it! That fish finger bao is 🔥”

Corner 75, Randwick
Reminiscing on her “heartwarming dinner” at this recently refreshed neighbourhood dining room, Lawson noted that she was “still thinking about the pork schnitzel with its properly undulating crust: crisp, crisp, crisp on the outside; juicy, juicy, juicy on the inside.”

She also ordered the roast Sommerlad chicken and what Lawson describes as “the most wonderful creamed spinach, always a favourite, but especially good here; pickled red cabbage with caraway; deeply savoury herb-flecked cucumber salad; pickled red pepper stuffed with sauerkraut; and a little pot of fruity, fiery ruby-red sour cherry hot sauce that I want to eat with absolutely everything from here on in!”

Fontana, Redfern
Lawson’s verdict on this upstairs Redfern space? “ Just fabulous. ”

She started started with the pane fritto with anchovies, and then moved to another of her favourites: “crostini topped with soft-cooked beautifully bitter chicory, and here the crisp little toasts were first spread with velvety broad bean purée.” A special mention went out to the garlic bread, “which comes sumptuously in the form of a bread roll that gushes, at the greedy bite, with caramelised garlic butter.

“The food is exquisite but cosy, and the place immediately relaxing and uplifting. You know sometimes you meet someone new and it feels immediately like you must have known them forever? That’s what Fontana felt like.”

Beirut Boulevard, Lilyfield
This little Lebanese cafe and deli was a “ tale of two trays ” for Nigella.

“The first bearing Lebanese coffee; the second, fresh mint tea. Such beauty! And in between them came a falafel wrap, which I just inhaled before I thought to photograph it.”

She stocked up on groceries too, taking home baba ghanoush, hummus, flatbread and rice pudding.

Cho Cho San, Potts Point
Sydney loves Ramen Month at Cho Cho, and so does this celeb chef. You’ll find $25 yuzu shio bowls until the end of June, topped with a king prawn and clams, chicken or fried mushrooms. Or make it a happy meal, with a drink on arrival, steamed bun and tuna sashimi too.

Penny’s Cheese Shop, Potts Point
Penny Lawson is the authority on cheese in Sydney, and Nige knows it.

“I stoutly believe that there are few finer feasts than bread and cheese,” she wrote. She nabbed the “unbelievably good” kimchi and cheese toastie, which soars with seven (yes, seven) cheeses.

Juno and Sons, Elizabeth Bay
Lawson called into Juno and Sons for something standout to cook at home. While she was on a mission for the essentials (bread and chocolate), following a “greedy prowl around” she also nabbed a packet of pork dumplings from a “treasure trove of a freezer”.

Cafe Sydney, CBD
That magic lights-on moment at the start of every Vivid season is best observed from this Sydney icon. Queen Nigella was at the do she described as “ the party to watch the fireworks and feel the glow! ”

Flour and Stone, Woolloomooloo
Like us, Lawson says she never needs an excuse to go to Flour and Stone. She posted about a pre-dinner party trip to the bakery, where she bought a trio of cakes: a pistachio-raspberry-rose cake, a pannacotta lamington cake and a Valrhona manjari chocolate cake. She described them as “total knockouts”.

She also picked up a cinnamon morning bun and a ham and cheese toastie for her “own private edification”.

Palazzo Salato, CBD
“Double anchovy joy!” began Lawson in her post about the Love Tilly team’s CBD pasta joint. She ordered “the anchovy-anointed stracciatella with little cubes of toasted bread that I’ve been thinking about ever since I had it here last year.” It was followed by an “absurdly luscious spaghetti with brown butter, salted anchovies and Aleppo pepper”. She topped it off with a vodka martini, which she said “acted instantly” to (here she quoted Frank Bruni) “blunt the day and polish the night”.

Anchovy at Baba’s Place, Marrickville
Lawson has a history with Anchovy. In her post, she recalled that three years ago she enjoyed one of the most “rapturous dinners” she’d ever had at the inventive Melbourne Vietnamese venue. She fell for “enlivening clarity and uplifting brightness of Thi Le’s food”. While in Sydney this time, Lawson snagged tickets for Le’s takeover at Baba’s Place. She particularly enjoyed “the perfectly pitched balancing act that’s [Le’s] prawn and papaya goi: this gorgeous tangle of green mango and papaya, chilli, lemongrass and plump, tenderly sweet prawns, alive with lime, topped crunchily with fried shallots, more crunch provided by the most fabulous prawn crackers, just danced on the plate!”

Smalls Deli, Potts Point
Lawson had been in Sydney for a while when she realised it was “past time for my customary pilgrimage to Smalls Deli.”

“Delayed gratification is not really my thing,” she said in a post. “But my patience was rewarded by this gorgeous creation, the Toto”. The sandwich was “outrageously good: spread with lemony butter bean purée and pesto, it’s bulgingly stuffed with mortadella and mozzarella, exuberantly sprinkled with chopped toasted almonds, and topped with peppery rocket.”

Saint Peter, Paddington
Lawson wrote she’d been “entranced by the memory and wonder” of her dinner at Josh Niland’s Saint Peter. As many people before her have posited, she says “Josh Niland is, simply, a genius. It’s a wearyingly overused term, but in his case it feels shabbily inadequate. His inventiveness, delicate touch, exquisite care, and joyful gift for flavour and texture just bowl me over. I always go to his restaurants with the highest expectations, and every time his food exceeds them.”

She raved about dishes including “the sensational oysters and the coral trout bone noodles with maitake mushroom broth.” She also enjoyed the “smile-inducing raw Robinson’s bream, with marigold ponzu, cucumber and purple daikon [and] the crazily wonderful fish charcuterie, an area Josh has made stunningly his own. On the night I squiggled a diagram to show what each was, but which I now (unsurprisingly) find indecipherable!”

She enjoyed other mains like “the salt [and] vinegar line-caught blue mackerel” and “the heavenly calamari, cut like tagliatelle, with a meaty, gutsy yellow fin ’nduja.” For dessert, she had caviar-topped canelés, “I know it sounds weird, but that rich saltiness against the sweet crunchy creaminess was sensational!”

Not usually one to be defeated by food, Lawson said, “I actually didn’t have room for the perfect, sherbet-sharp and upliftingly bright yuzu meringue tart, so took it back to eat it later!”

Fratelli Paradiso, Potts Point
This 24-year-old classic is the restaurant Lawson reckons she’s eaten at “more often than at any other restaurant in Australia”. And she always makes sure it’s her first stop – it’s one of what she calls her “Rules for a Good Life”.

“Walking through the doors after a year away just felt like coming home,” she wrote on Instagram. “I love everything about this place: great people, great mood, great food … behold the beauteous Bombalaska! I don’t expect to eat a better pudding while I’m here, and I don’t need to: I’ll just keep on coming back for this! It’s got a base of hazelnut praline, and beneath the flame-bronzed Italian meringue is mounded pistachio semifreddo and lemon curd. I swooned with each spoonful.

“The delicious steps that led up to this were gratifyingly as follows: olive ascolane, my every-time, on-arrival order, those fat and juicy green olives stuffed, here, with sharp cheese before being breadcrumbed then deep fried; puntarelle, that bitter zig-zaggy chicory tangled with anchovies; Fratelli’s signature scampi spaghettini; and a magnificent pork chop with agretti (Monk’s Beard) and white polenta. Purring with pleasure, and planning when I can come back for more.”

Sean’s, Bondi
“Roast chook at Sean’s epitomises the perfect Sydney Sunday for me,” Lawson wrote in another Instagram post. “Much happiness provided too by the exquisite cruditées and fennel chowder with blue claw yabbies that came first, as well as just dreamy dessert of crostoli with pistachio cream, kumquat, quince and persimmon.

“Of course, @seanmoran64 (and everyone who works there) radiating gorgeousness, as ever,” she continued. “And, oh, that blackboard of joy. I’m actually too full up even to write now, which explains why this is a short caption by my standards. And my heart is full, as well.”

Owner Sean Moran summed up our city’s sentiments in a comment: “Sydney loves you Nigella, and so do we. Thank you for always seeing the good in restaurants, especially this salty crusted show.”

Where Nigella Lawson ate in Sydney, 2024

Breakfast

Flour & Stone, Woolloomooloo
Nadine Ingram’s baked goods are, quite simply, perfected – and Lawson knows it. “It was a bit of a tussle for me to choose between a canelé and a morning bun,” she writes on Instagram. “The obvious answer was to go for both! In my book, it’s a sin to pass up on opportunities for pleasure when they present themselves.”

Lunch

Sean’s, Bondi
“I’ve been going to @seansbondi for Sunday lunch whenever I’m in Sydney for as long as I can remember,” she writes. “It’s such a haven of loveliness, and the food is only one part of it, but not an inconsiderable part, nonetheless: mussels, radishes and romesco; sweetcorn chowder with prawn toast; that famous roast chook; and perfect baked custard with rhubarb. On top of all that, @seanmoran64 and his gorgeous staff made it, as they always do, a perfect day.”

Lucky Kwong, Eveleigh
Lawson’s been a long-time friend of Kylie Kwong, and when she enters her lunchtime-only Eveleigh restaurant she feels a “ surge of happiness … I know I also veer into the wildly woo-woo when I write about this place, but it really does feel, for me, like entering a hallowed space.”

And what is she ordering? Kwong’s home-style fried eggs (“crisp-edged, gooey-centred, chilli-hot”); an Australian-Cantonese coleslaw with Mooloolaba tuna and bush mint (“I could eat this forever!”); and a whole snapper from Ulladulla, deep fried and dressed with XO, finger lime pearls and Geraldton Wax grown on-site.

Cho Cho San, Potts Point
After picking up Madeleine Gray’s Green Dot at Potts Point Bookshop, Lawson waltzed across the road to Cho Cho to eat “pretty much everything on the menu”. Specifically though, the “exquisite” tataki tuna.

Penny’s Cheese Shop, Potts Point
Penny Lawson’s Macleay Street fromagerie is in a near-constant buzz of cheese passed to and fro across the counter – surely only amped up when Nigella Lawson dropped in. “I love @pennyscheeseshop and have, over the years, tried to eat my way through the Australian cheese section. On my latest visit, the blessed Penny gave me a taste of this flower-crusted alpine cheese made in the Adelaide Hills by @s28cheeses. It had, somehow, the flavour of spring – and of course it turns out that it is, indeed, called Primavera. Just perfect! I had to buy all of it.”

She also nabbed a blue to savour with a glass of her beloved Aristotelis ke Anthoula vermouth, made way south in Merimbula.

Dinner

Baba’s Place, Marrickville
Lawson left the party-ready Marrickville warehouse restaurant in a “crazy haze of all-over enthusiasm”. The tarama toast starred in its simplicity, as with everything. “The thing about the cooking at Baba’s Place is that it never betrays the simplicity at the heart of good, traditional food by being fancy and clever for its own sake but, rather, infuses it with a wholehearted and playful joy,” she writes. “Everything that comes out of this talented kitchen is a beguiling combination of the hearty and the exquisite. I ate lots, photographed little, and cannot wait to be back!

“I feared a restaurant in a converted warehouse in Marrickville would be hipsterish and contemptuously cool: it turned out to be the warmest, most welcoming place I could ever imagine. I adored the scarlet-painted wall-section with its jumble of photos and pictures and the collage of Turkish rugs on the floor, I adored the people and I adored the food.”

Bar Copains, Surry Hills
It’s only right that the culinary star took a night off to hit Nathan Sasi and Morgan Mcglone’s gem of a place. A vodka Martini to start – an extremely hot order – followed by the pig’s head fritti, perfected fish sangas, brown butter leeks and the amaro crème caramel to finish.

Cafe Paci, Newtown
Straight into another banger: Pasi Petänen’s charming King Street dining room, which “no visit to Sydney would be complete without”. There was the “essential” order of rye toast piled with ‘nduja and bright discs of fermented carrot, another brown butter leeks dish (this time with spanner crab), and a “magnificent” salad of radicchio, figs and blackberries. “Thank you, too, lovely Lilian,” Lawson writes, “for looking after us so well and keeping those Dirty Martinis coming!”

Fratelli Paradiso, Potts Point
This 23-year-old classic is the restaurant Lawson reckons she’s eaten at “more often than at any other restaurant in Australia”. A silky scampi spaghettini (that’s been on the menu since opening) was the order. “Just ordering it, let alone eating it, makes me smile.”

Pork Fat, Haymarket
Lawson’s ability to wax lyrical about food – and Sydney – is both generous and, from Broadsheet ’s perspective, genuine. This time for Narin “Jack” Kulasai’s Haymarket restaurant. “A trip to Sydney without a visit to the peerless @porkfatsydney would be just unthinkable for me,” she writes. “It’s a small, unpretentious place serving fiercely exquisite Thai food with big flavours and even bigger heart.” She ordered the deeply smoky larb topped with “glorious” cubes of pork fat and mint, the “fresh and fiery” papaya salad, and the deep-fried pork belly with chilli lime nahm jim. “This is food that makes me feel sizzlingly alive – and, so much part of what creates that feeling, the people there are so deeply lovely, too.”

King Clarence, CBD
The Bentley Group’s latest addition to the stable is a winner, and it was chef Khanh Nguyen’s place in the kitchen that got the UK chef in. One of her “culinary heroes”, Nguyen prepped those vibrant fish finger baos for Lawson – plus the duck tsukune sausage sanga, lemongrass XO clams (“One or those dishes you pronounce too rich to eat much of, then hoover down effortlessly!”), spanner crab fried rice and mapo tofu. To finish, the matcha ice-cream sundae with Davidson plum shaved ice, blackcurrant, strawberry gum and mochi – like a “palate-awakening mixture of sour, sweet, smooth, crunch and chew.”

“The thing about @genghiskhanh’s cooking is that he has a profound understanding of just how far to push the balance of textures as well as the play of flavours, and it’s so resoundingly evident in every dish he creates,” she writes. “I bow down before him.”

Petermen, North Sydney
Josh and Julie Niland’s north-side dining room is just as impressive as St Peter, but more accessible with its à la carte menu. “I don’t know how @mrniland does it, but I’m just glad he does,” Lawson writes of her visit. “I cannot stop thinking about this extraordinary … line-caught hapuka with bone noodles and agretti in a vivid and headily fragrant lobster broth.” She goes on to educate on agretti – an Italian “reed-like vegetable” – and Niland’s deft skills in making noodles out of fish bones.

“I love Josh Niland’s obsessively enquiring nature and the food it results in. I’ve waffled on so much, and won’t hold you up much longer, but must also acknowledge admiringly the as-ever incredible oysters; the little fermented rice cakes with summer truffle and periwinkles; the spicy little sausages made from yellowfin tuna; and the heavenly yuzushu parfait with meringue and mango sorbet and enchanting raspberry and juniper Madeleines, baked in oyster shells, with @malfroys_wild_honey cream. Over and out!”

Feather & Bone, Marrickville
Around all the dining out, there are surely a few nights in too. “Going to restaurants is such a treat, but being cooked for at home is the biggest treat of all,” she writes. “Incredible steak from @featherandboneprovidore with perfect peas and roast potatoes, all cooked exquisitely. True loveliness.”

As Kwong writes on behalf of Australian chefs, restaurateurs and foodies: “thank you Nigella for coming to Australia so often, for uplifting everyone’s spirits with your infectious, intuitive energy and frequent visits to our places and spaces, for your articulate, erudite and considered acknowledgements, for your deep appreciation of the challenges that come with our industry, and for your warmth and kindness to all of our staff.” Couldn’t have said it better.

@nigellalawson

Additional reporting by Lucy Bell Bird.