It’s high-voltage Mediterranean snacking and staff who never miss a beat at Watermans, the latest two-hatter by the team behind the Good Food Guide’s New Restaurant of the Year.
Mediterranean$$
Something about this restaurant feels very familiar. Yes, it’s the second place Bentley Group’s Brent Savage and Nick Hildebrandt have opened at Barangaroo (they ran celebrated seafood restaurant Cirrus from 2016 til 2024). But that’s not it.
It reminds me of the Bentley Bar in its original Surry Hills location, back in the mid-aughts. It was one of the first places I remember experiencing in Sydney that offered easy service with food and wine that was anything but. Where creativity ruled on the plate and in the glass, lunch could melt into dinner, and dinner could melt into, well, just about anything.
That vibe is replicated here. On the floor, staff are friendly and relaxed, delivering equal parts laconic charm and finely honed skill, never missing a beat or a half-empty glass. In the kitchen, run day-to-day by Darryl Martin (former co-owner and chef of Marrickville’s Barzaari), it’s a riot of Mediterranean-inspired colour and high-definition flavour, presented with Savage’s fine-dining aesthetic.
As with Bentley Group’s other venues, Melbourne-based architect Pascale Gomes-McNabb is behind the design. The palette here is softer, earthier and less moody than say, Bentley, King Clarence or Eleven Barrack, which won New Restaurant of the Year at The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2026 Awards. The 120-seater has a large, leafy outdoor section, which I’m looking forward to frequenting, and from certain tables inside, you get little peeks of the harbour.
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Snacks are a strong suit in all of Savage and Hildebrandt’s venues. Watermans (named after the street intersecting its Barangaroo Avenue address, by the way) is no exception. Tiropita translates as fine pastry cigars filled with whipped feta, topped with a slice of fresh cherry and a pickled caper leaf. Taramasalata is served on a fluffy round of semi-sweet, Greek-style bread garnished with trout roe. Both disappear with a single bite.
From the mezze, try crunchy, sesame-crusted falafels dotted with tahini mayo and a mix of Middle Eastern-style pickles, finished with a thicket of citrusy, anise-y herbs (finally, The Year of Dill). Plump new-season figs are stuffed with halloumi, baked until gooey and drizzled with warm, saffron-tinted honey.
It reminds me of the original Bentley Bar … where lunch could melt into dinner, and dinner could melt into, well, just about anything.
Lovers of Barzaari might recognise dishes such as creamy labne bejewelled with pomegranate seeds and lightly salted cucumber rounds. Order a round of charred, puffy pita bread to offset that cool, semi-sweet strained yoghurt.
Salted, Mediterranean-style air-dried beef is served thinly shaved with crunchy, thick-cut pink pickled onion rings, baby radicchio leaves and candied baby eggplant. A beautifully balanced dish.
Skewers of wood-fired quail are painted in a bittersweet carob and quince glaze, and served with a blackened lime half and (more!) dill. I love the soft, silky, salty lamb kofta, covered in rounds of sumac-dusted white onion and accompanied by a parsley sauce. Village rice is a must: buttery basmati mixed with vermicelli noodles, served with yoghurt to mix through at the table.
Family-style dishes include a whole wood-fired flounder dressed with cherry tomato halves, sweet macerated currants and peppery wilted sorrel, scattered with petal-like shavings of garlic. Do you need to order the beef and fenugreek sausage and saucy caramelised onions on top of all that? Probably not. Should you? Probably.
Wine direction is definitely skewed towards the Mediterranean, though with Hildebrandt behind the drinks, anything goes. Asking him to tailor a list too specifically is like asking van Gogh to only paint ears. He or one of the members of his wine-loving floor squad might pour a crisp, grassy Santorini field blend, or a rich, juicy red from the Languedoc. Perhaps, as you head towards dessert, it’ll be a mastiha – a viscous, floral spirit made from resin that bleeds from a tree found only on the Greek island of Chios.
Dessert? Order all of them and argue the toss later. Halva ice-cream layered with fine shavings of grape granita and dressed with syrupy wine-must vinegar, say. Or shards of brik pastry, each built out with splodges of cherry jam and aniseed sorbet. Oh, and don’t nap on the cute fluoro-pink pinwheels of rosewater jelly and marshmallow – Watermans’ take on Turkish delight.
Barangaroo might feel perpetually half-finished, but this restaurant feels wholly complete.
The low-down
Atmosphere: High-voltage snacking with a relaxed attitude
Go-to dishes: Labne with cucumbers and pomegranate ($16); falafel ($26); wood-fired figs ($14); lamb kofta ($38); village rice ($18)
Drinks: A tight curation of Medi/Medi-adjacent wine and cocktails
Cost: About $150 for two, excluding drinks
Good Food reviews are booked anonymously and paid independently. A restaurant can’t pay for a review or inclusion in the Good Food Guide.
Myffy Rigby is the former editor of the Good Food Guide.
