Restaurant Week returns with 180 Sydney venues

Restaurant Week returns in November with 180 venues inside Sydney proper and a further 220 across the wider metropolitan area, and a headline change: a new $65 dinner menu tier aimed squarely at the suburbs. Sydney Restaurant Week remains the largest fixed-menu event on the city's calendar, and the 2026 edition is its widest yet.

What has changed for 2026

Three changes shape the 2026 edition. First, the new $65 tier sits between the existing $55 and $85 bands and is the fastest-selling category at last year's edition. Second, the festival has added a Sunday lunch roster, which was absent in previous years. Third, a no-show deposit is now required for weekend bookings, refundable up to 24 hours before the sitting.

Organisers say the $65 tier exists because the $55 menus have compressed margins across the city while the $85 tier skips straight past the mid-market. Of the 400 participating restaurants this year, 118 have listed a $65 dinner menu, against 74 last year.

Lunch remains free to book for most venues, with 291 restaurants offering a lunch menu under $55, including 46 under $40.

How the booking window works

Bookings open at 10am on 20 October for all venues simultaneously, and this year the system allows one booking per person rather than one per household. The change is expected to reduce duplicate account creation, which organisers estimated at 12 per cent of last year's reservations.

Dinners are served Thursday through Monday. Lunches run Friday to Monday at participating venues, with 204 restaurants offering them.

Venues that do not require a deposit are marked in the listings, and there are 96 of them. Bookings close when a venue sells out, and roughly a third of last year's venues went in the first two days.

What to book first

Three parts of the city are unusually well covered. Newtown and Surry Hills account for 54 venues between them, the densest cluster in the festival. The Bondi to Coogee corridor has 31, helped by the addition of four beachside venues that have not participated before. And Parramatta has grown to 22 venues from 14 last year.

North of the harbour remains thinner, with 14 venues in Manly, Mosman and the lower north shore — a sharp drop from 27 in 2024, which organisers attribute to venue closures.

For the $65 tier, five venues stand out on paper: a Marrickville kitchen doing a six-course menu focused on Central Coast seafood; a CBD restaurant reworking its classic bistro dishes at three courses; a Newtown cafe opening a first-ever dinner service with a four-course menu; a Bondi venue serving a coastal menu at four courses; and a Parramatta restaurant running a South West Asian menu with house-fermented drinks included.

The practical detail

Menus are fixed and generally two courses for lunch, three to five for dinner, with dietary requirements handled at booking. Wine pairings cost an additional $38 to $65, and 62 per cent of venues report that they sell more pairing glasses than they did in 2024.

Most venues do not accept walk-ins during Restaurant Week, and the listings page carries opening hours, deposit requirements, transport notes and step-free access details for each site.

The four beachside venues joining the Bondi to Coogee run are worth flagging for anyone without a car: all four are within a five-minute walk of a light rail stop or a bus interchange, which is the most reliable way to handle the Corso and Campbell Parade parking situation in the eastern suburbs.

Venue response times have also improved. Last year, 41 venues confirmed bookings more than three weeks out, which is where the bulk of cancellations happened. This year, venues have committed to a 72-hour confirmation window, and the listings page flags any venue that has not met it.

Bookings for the November edition open on the festival's official listings site at 10am on 20 October.