Berowra Waters Inn
Reaching the dining room requires a boat — there is no road in, only a wharf, a ferry crossing, or your own vessel tied up on Berowra Creek, a quiet tributary of the Hawkesbury an hour north of Sydney. The building is a small piece of architectural history, a 1920s teahouse reworked from 1976 by Pritzker Prize-winning architect Glenn Murcutt into a low, glass-walled pavilion of sandstone and corrugated tin that reads as a verandah suspended over water. Brian Geraghty, who trained at Bilson's, Quay and the two-Michelin-starred Pied à Terre in London, took over the kitchen in 2012 and was named Chef of the Year by Gault & Millau in 2018. His degustation of Australian produce changes with what the season allows, served in a room where the view does most of the talking. It has held chef hats since the 1980s, among the longest continuous recognitions in the country, and the isolation — no passing trade, no shortcuts, every guest committed before they even arrive — is entirely the point of the place.