Finding places to eat is not difficult in Sydney. There is a bar, a café, or a restaurant in every corner, making it difficult to choose. On the first night I led my tour mates towards Victoria St on Potts Point (yeah, that’s right, me giving directions to a group of people!) We decided on an English pub but after everybody got settled I realized you can smoke inside restaurants in Australia, so I had to get out of there and find a place elsewhere. Best decision ever because off on my own I stumbled upon an organic place with Wi-Fi: “Grill’d”. They serve burgers and salads but with many gluten-free options. It is a chain, but to help bring their community together “Grill’d” has a program called “Local Matters” where every month they highlight three different local businesses and donate part of their money to them.

Salad and wine at Grill’d

The next night we went to posh Darling Harbour for dinner. Australians are crazy about their barbie. By the way, Aussies shorten every word so barbecue becomes barbie, breakfast becomes breakie, etc. At “Stacks” we cooked our own steak and had some more Australian wine, which I’m very fond of 😉

Grilling my own steak at “Stacks”

By far, my favorite find in Australia has been their savory pies. Flaky crust, warm creamy meat or chicken inside… Yum! I’ve been having one for lunch every day, and I can’t get enough of them. Most restaurants here are “takeaway”, and pies are easy to grab on the go. One place in Sydney called “Harry’s Café de Wheels” is so famous around the world for their pies, tons of celebrities eat there even though it’s just a food truck style place. I also found a meat pie window inside a leather purse store the other day. They are everywhere. Lucky me!

Meat pie from Leura’s leather shop

Sydney is also dessert heaven. All my hard work for the past year has been thrown out of the window after I got to Australia. They have cheesecakes, cupcakes, brownies, pies, cakes, and gourmet chocolates readily available in every corner as well. One of their most famous chocolate and coffee shops is “Guylian’s”, where I had a delicious lemon merengue pie that rivals my favorite ones from Brazil.

Lemon pie from Guylian

Chocolate and more chocolate

On my last night in Sydney I couldn’t wait to try kangaroo, so I went to a pizza place called “Australian Hotel”. I mean, everything is good on pizza, so there was no way I wouldn’t like it. I actually got a pizza with half-kangaroo meat and half-emu meat to kill two birds with one stone (no pun intended for the emu…). The emu was very salty and I didn’t care for it. The kangaroo was lovely, and it looked and tasted just like roast beef. Needless to say, I ate the whole thing plus a couple of slices of the pumpkin pizza someone else had ordered. Good thing I had gone on another jog in Sydney’s Hyde Park that afternoon.

Kangaroo and Emu pizza