There’s a serious confidence to a restaurant that doesn’t hand you a menu of endless choices. At tilda, the message is simpler – trust us. And right now, what’s coming next is Fire & Wine – the restaurant’s new Saturday night ritual, a set-menu experience that distils everything tilda does best into one quietly brilliant, woodfire-led dinner. One Hat. One fire. One menu that changes every month. And, judging by the tables already filling from 5pm each Saturday, Sydney is paying attention.
Located inside the newly reimagined Sofitel Sydney Wentworth, tilda has quickly become one of the city’s most compelling dining rooms: warm and cocooning with rust-toned interiors, low lighting and a private dining room that feels made for long lunches. But while the room is beautiful, it’s what arrives on the plate – and in the glass — that has earned the restaurant serious credibility.
In its first full year, tilda has been awarded One Hat in the 2025 Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide and claimed three glasses in the Australian Wine List of the Year Awards 2025 – no small feat in a city where diners are spoiled for choice.
Still, nothing quite captures the restaurant’s ethos like Fire & Wine.
Priced from $99 per person, the monthly-changing menu is built around produce at its seasonal peak, with tilda’s chefs letting charcoal, smoke and flame do much of the talking. Add either the Classic Match ($50) or the Sommelier Pairing ($85), and the evening becomes less dinner, more narrative – each course arriving with its own carefully considered liquid counterpart.
And every story at tilda begins the same way: with Bread and Butter Service.
Warm saltbush focaccia arrives with cultured butter, alongside a richly Australian spread of macadamia, buffalo ricotta and smoked eggplant, finished with wildflower honey and wattleseed. It’s the sort of course that has diners instinctively reaching for their phones before remembering they’d rather just eat it.
This month’s Fire & Wine menu opens with snacks that set the tone immediately: woodfire oyster with Old Bay spice, fingerlime and wasabi, followed by torched kangaroo backstrap with pickled onion, smoked yoghurt and rosemary – dishes that feel unmistakably Australian but sharpened by global technique.
The first course brings smoked ocean trout, cured and paired with horseradish cream, preserved lemon and pickled fennel – delicate, bright and balanced by a crisp Grüner Veltliner, or for those going deeper, a village Chablis selected by the sommelier.
Then comes the centrepiece: Kinross Station lamb rack, kissed by fire and served with miso-charred eggplant, Valencia orange and lamb fat jus, alongside grilled cos heart layered with chickpea miso, macadamia and aged balsamic. It’s rustic, elegant and intensely flavourful.
Dessert, naturally, doesn’t shout. Instead, tilda closes with riz au lait – Koshihikari rice, grilled fig and jasmine ice cream – comforting, fragrant and luxurious.
That’s the thing about tilda. Nothing feels forced or overworked. It’s polished, yes – but never precious. Just fire. Wine. And a restaurant that knows exactly who it is.
Related stories
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
Native ad body.
