Good Food launches 100 Essential Cafes and Bakeries guides, expands to Brisbane, Perth

What makes a good cafe in 2026? It’s what we’ll explore when we publish the 100 Essential Cafes and Bakeries of Sydney and Melbourne on Friday, July 24.

After bringing back our comprehensive Sydney and Melbourne guides last year for the first time since 2014 – complete with a new artisan bakery section – we’re expanding once again. This year, Good Food is officially welcoming Brisbane and Perth to the lineup.

Like last year, all venues are reviewed anonymously.

The guides include venues that are best for food, coffee, tea and matcha, as well as where to get the city’s best sweets, sandwiches, bread and baked goods, and institutions that continue to make our cities great. In Sydney and Melbourne, we’ve whittled the list down to 100.

They’ll be published in the Good Food lift-outs in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age on Friday, July 24, and Sunday, July 26, and the following week on Friday, July 31, and Sunday, August 2.

You can find our reviews online, but the best way to experience the guide is through the Good Food app. It lets you search via an interactive map, browse custom collections, and filter down to the exact cuisine, dietary need, dining style or suburb you’re looking for while you’re on the go. The app is available as a standalone subscription and is included in premium subscriptions to The Herald, The Age, and Brisbane Times.

The expansion begins with a 60-venue round-up for Brisbane and a 50-review guide for Perth. Both city guides will roll out in two weekly instalments, publishing across consecutive Fridays on July 24 and July 31.

Although the country’s cafe scene has long been regarded as world-class, as we discovered last year, it continues to evolve.

“Bill Granger’s avo toast legacy and a ‘no worries, mate’ approach to service remain hallmarks of the Australian cafe scene,” says Sydney cafe guide editor Bianca Hrovat. “But we’ve seen further expansion and innovation across suburbs, cultures and generations to create something new.

“Our list of Sydney’s 100 essential cafes and bakeries captures the full culinary spectrum. It spans a Granville patisserie that’s been making its best-selling baklava since 1984, to a new Bondi bakery with hour-long lines for cinnamon scrolls.”

Melbourne cafe editor Emily Holgate says her hometown has long been a cafe leader, but this year it’s truly exploded. “Each week we seem to gain a hot new spot to queue for fermented sourdough baked goods, zesty cold foam lattes, pour-over coffee and gooey cinnamon scrolls,” she says.

Brisbane food editor Matt Shea says that, like Sydney and Melbourne, the Queensland capital’s cafe market has shifted towards smaller, hyper-specialised spaces since the pandemic, from speciality coffee shops to fancy bakeries and chef-run sandwich shops doing one or two things well.

“That means the scene is more varied and interesting, and the full-service cafes that remain in the game – or the new ones that enter it – have to be great ones. Drilling it down to just 60 venues was tricky.”

Perth’s guide editor Max Veenhuyzen has a similar dilemma. “Every West Australian knows that when it comes to cafes, we’ve got it good. But it’s only when you do something as mildly insane as trying to distil Perth’s vibrant cafe and coffee culture into 50 essential addresses that you really understand just how good we have it, especially in the suburbs where standards keep getting better.”

The Good Food app is available as a standalone subscription and is included in premium subscriptions to The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Brisbane Times. Download it from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store.