Must-read Earlier Installments:

• Singapore, Cathay, and Qantas First Class.. Some of the Best Meals of My Life, and a Tour of Hyatts in Bangkok, Singapore, and Sydney
  
• Inside the New Oneworld Lounge at LAX’s Tom Bradley International Terminal
• Cathay Pacific First Class, Los Angeles – Hong Kong
  
• Cathay Pacific “The Wing” First Class Lounge, Hong Kong
  
• Cathay Pacific Business Class, Hong Kong – Bangkok
  
• Grand Hyatt Bangkok: Suite, Club Lounge, and Facilities
  
• Thai Molecular Gastronomy at Sra Bua in Bangkok
• Getting Custom Tailored Suits Made in Bangkok at Empire Tailors
  
• Nahm at the Metropolitan: the Best Thai Food in Thailand?
  
• Thailand’s Iron Chef Cooks Ancient Recipes in a Deserted Top Notch Restaurant
  
• Eating The Best Local Thai Dishes in the Bangrak Neighborhood of Bangkok
  
• Louis Tavern CIP Lounge and Cathay Pacific Business Class, Bangkok-Singapore
  
• Grand Hyatt Singapore
  
• Eating and Entertainment Like a Singapore Local
  
• Singapore Airlines ‘The Private Room’ First Class Lounge
  
• Singapore Airlines A380 Suites Class, Singapore – Sydney
  
• Park Hyatt Sydney

I’m not going to cover drinking from my uncle’s extensive wine collection or eating my aunt’s Thanksgiving dinner (they really did have a couple dozen folks over for an American Thanksgiving). I tend not to blog much about my family.

Instead I thought I’d share a few thoughts on dining and drinking in Sydney. There’s a developed high-end scene, and Tetsuya’s — generally regarded to have falled several notches in the past few years — remains one of my all-time favorite meals. On this trip I did have a booking at Quay, the best-regarded restaurant in town, which I’ll cover in a separate post.

But Sydney is interestingly situated to benefit from the food perspectives of Asia, plus it’s a real world city with its own eclectic edge. It develops interesting trends, that don’t always get spread to the U.S. or Europe for quite some time (it’s taken nearly two decades for us to see the ‘Flat White’ in Starbucks!).

Here’s a bar in a barber shop. (The bar is up the stairs, past the barber chairs.) They’re into craft cocktails and enter several bartending competitions. They don’t have much ‘real food’ although you can apparently order in pizza. And you can get your haircut there, though I went at night after the actual barber closed.

Here’s a bar.. in a record store. Mojo Record Bar is a relaxed, intimate, low key sort of place with good music (a classic rock while I was there) and accessible snacks (the hot dog is recommended but I didn’t try one).

Neil Perry, the celebrity Australian celebrity chef with whom Qantas has a long-standing association, has a new ‘fast food’ place The Burger Project in the World Square Shopping Center on George Street. It underwhelmed.

It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t better than an In ‘n Out Burger — in fact that’s the closest approximation I can come up with for the concept and taste.

So instead of filling up on my burger I went directly next door to Sydney’s outpost of the Taiwanese chain Din Tai Fung.

You can never go wrong with xiaolongbao, a kind of soup dumpling. Having already had some burger, we shared this and a dessert.

If you ever find yourself skipping dessert and wanting some while staying at the Park Hyatt Sydney, you can do worse than walking into La Renaissance. Their macarons aren’t Pierre Herme but they’re very good for Sydney!

(If you wake up in the middle of the night hungry, or come back really late after drinking, you can always go next door to the Park Hyatt for Pancakes on the Rocks .. fortunately, I didn’t have the need.)

For a great carry away sandwich (though there are a handful of stools to eat there), try Mr. Crackles on Oxford Street in Darlinghurst.

We shared a Crackles Classic sandwich and pork fries.

It was out of this world good.

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