Strike gold with fine dining in Sydney

Expensive in anyone's currency, the exclusive Quay restaurant sits on the water's edge with the Sydney Harbour Bridge to the left, the Opera House to the right and green-and-gold ferries chugging below.

During the Olympic Games next month, mere mortals will no doubt be able to peer up at the building, which resembles a glass control-tower, to see lucky diners tucking into freshly shucked oysters or perhaps roasted chicken with foie gras ravioli and truffle.

But it won't be possible to eat there. During the Games, the Quay is the private canteen for the International Olympic Committee staff.

So where will the rest of us dine? Will visitors be able to find a seat at some of Sydney's best tables? Well, ordinary citizens will still be able to put in an order for a pav at the Opera House's renowned Bennelong restaurant - as long as it's not between lunch and dinner, when it is booked out by the Sydney Organising Committee for the Games.

It is true that some restaurants are already heavily booked for the two weeks of the Games. Bistro Mars, at the sailing headquarters of Rushcutters Bay, for instance, will be flat out feeding the many yachting teams staying nearby.

And the French-Japanese cuisine of the famous Tetsuya's will be difficult to get to, located as it is on Victoria Rd, the main route from the city to the Homebush Bay stadiums.

But the majority of Sydney restaurants will tell you it will be business as usual during the Games, even though many don't yet know if they will have the staff to cope with the demand.

And the predicted traffic chaos has put a large question mark over raw produce supplies. Robert Goldman, chief executive of the Restaurant and Catering Association of New South Wales, suggests restaurants will cope simply by keeping their stovetops fired up longer, enabling people to still walk in for dinner at 10.30 pm.

Tasting the famous modern Australian cuisine will be high on the must-do list for Olympics visitors. But what exactly is it? Australian chefs have, in recent years, developed a worldwide reputation for experimental flair.

A basic Italian ravioli might, for example, be filled with the Asian flavours of prawn, lime and lemongrass and served with a roasted capsicum sauce.

Another restaurant might whip up a Malaysian laksa with the Indian spice garam masala, Australian jewfish and al dente semolina noodles substituted for rice noodles.

"Mod Oz" has come to mean everything from restaurants that offer a United Nations of menus - an African curry next to a plate of nachos and a bowl of pasta - to the unique fusion cuisine of Tetsuya Wakadu of Tetsuya's.

Originally from Japan, Wakadu combines Australian ingredients with both Japanese and French techniques to come up with a style of cuisine that is so popular that diners regularly have to wait six weeks for a booking.

Wakadu is like those computer engineers who are packing more and more power into smaller and smaller gadgets: he just does it with morsels of food that come with megabytes of flavour.

Throughout a seven or 13-course degustation menu, you'll be served dishes such as ocean trout with konbu seaweed and seared veal fillet with shiitake mushrooms.

The freewheeling Mod Oz style also owes much to the huge range and variety of raw produce on hand, and to the influences of waves of immigrants that have built Australia's multicultural population, most recently from South-east Asia. Visiting some of Sydney's suburbs can be like taking a day trip to another continent.

In Cabramatta, Vietnamese pho soups (pronounced "fur") are prepared by the French method of making stocks over 12 hours and served with various meats and fresh Vietnamese mints.

In the south-western suburb of Campsie you can sit on satin cushions as waitresses bring you more kimchi than in all of Seoul.

There are many excellent restaurants at a range of prices across Sydney, but many of the best are to be found in the suburbs surrounding the central business district: Potts Pt, Darlinghurst and Paddington to the east, Surry Hills to the south. Here is a selection of some of the most talked about eateries:

SURRY HILLS has traditionally been known for its artists' studios and galleries but recently it has been attracting some of the city's best food artists.

Crown St, which runs through the middle of Surry Hills and ends in Darlinghurst, is where the fashionable food fans head. Here you can sample the European-influenced modern Australian food of Greek-Australian Janni Kyritsis at MG Garage, where the interior is as plush as the inside of a Porsche.

While you're tucking into guinea fowl baked in clay with a barley pilaf, you can size up an Aston Martin or a Lotus in the adjoining car yard, or order an MG 18.i (just $45,000) from the menu.

Next door is Kyritsis' somewhat cheaper Fuel, a bistro and a boutique deli and grocery that sells baked goods, fresh fruit and vegetables and packets of white truffle risotto.

Opposite MG and Fuel you'll find the purple-painted Prasits. Cheeky, camp waiters with painted arched eyebrows serve up rich, banquet-style Thai food.

And in the city that's home to the Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras and thousands of topless sunbakers, no one blinks an eye at dishes like condom salad (tiger prawn and seafood with latex-like rice paper) or morning glory (watercress with pork, prawns and chicken).

Nearby is Longrain, another Thai restaurant-bar and increasingly the place to be seen. Two long communal steel tables run the length of this warehouse conversion and the designer diners yell to their chums across the tables' expanse.

Entrees include cute, baby-sized fresh green betel leaves topped with chicken and Thai spices (order one with the house caiposka drink of vodka, lime and ice), while mains range from whole mud crabs to the ubiquitous pat thai noodles.

Not far south, in the suburb of REDFERN, is Alio. Run by contemporaries of Britain's Naked Chef, the young Jamie Oliver (they all cooked together at London's River Cafe), it serves an up-to-the-minute blend of modern British, modern Australian and traditional Italian food.

You can get some great quality food here slightly cheaper than at more established Sydney eateries cooking similar food.

In the eastern beachside suburbs, BONDI has long been known for its culinary lows. But in recent years several fancy cafes, kosher eateries and funky Chinese noodle houses have opened .

For breakfast - one of the most important meals of the day in this celebrity-thick part of town - try DIG for tofu fry-ups or hollandaise and eggs, or Fu-manchu for vegan laksas and duck noodle soups and a first-floor view overlooking the beach.

The suburbs of the inner west offer some of the best variety, quality and price range. In NEWTOWN, next to the University of Sydney, King St has been dubbed Little Bangkok for the sheer number of Thai eateries there. But you'll also find African, Lebanese, Italian, Indonesian and Japanese restaurants, to name just some.

King St is also where you'll find one of Sydney's best native food nosheries. Lillipilli cooks up what could perhaps be best described as gourmet bush tucker such as baked barramundi cooked in paperbark, and kangaroo steaks with sauces made from goberta and other wild fruits.

Another good eat street in the inner west is Norton St in LEICHHARDT. It's Sydney's Little Italy, with a bustling street scene, bookshops, bars and a cinema complex among the traditional trattorias and the more minimalist-chic Italian restaurants.

But if it's pizza you're after, try La Disfida in the suburb of HABERFIELD (halfway between the city centre and the Olympic Homebush stadiums) or Arthurs Pizza in trendy, inner-city PADDINGTON.

Thousands of Chinese immigrants settled in Australia in the gold-rush years of the 1850s and 1860s, and these days Sussex and Dixon Sts abutting DARLING HARBOUR is a thriving Chinatown with dozens of grocers and clothes stores and Sydney's largest market, Paddy's Market.

On weekends, groups of hyper-extended families flock to yum cha sittings, where staff wield walkie-talkies and push trolley after trolley of steamed pork buns, barbecued chicken feet and much more: try Kam Fook and Silver Spring.

On weeknights, BBQ King is everyone's favourite: it's affordable, open late, and many of Sydney's best chefs head here for a plate of Peking duck after they've hung up their chopping boards for the night. For Cantonese, try Golden Century.

The down side to all this fabulous eating is that, like any big city with many tourists, the meals can be overpriced, waiters surly and bookings squeezed into slots of two hours or less.

But venture out of the usual tourist haunts and you'll find that you can dine in almost as much style as the International Olympic Committee itself.

* Kath Kenny is the coordinating author of Lonely Planet's Out to Eat Sydney.