As with any place you live for a while you acquire favourite places of your own. As my home city, Sydney has had plenty of time to grow on me, and I have had a corresponding plentifulness of time in which to discover a bunch of quaint, quirky or just plain interesting little nooks and crannies within this vibrant, beautiful city.
There is the Bambini Wine Room on Elizabeth Street, a tiny place opposite Hyde Park where you walk through the front doors and immediately feel as though you've stepped back into the 1920s or 30s. Get there at 5pm and you'll join the post-work rush for a very sophisticated drink in this small art-deco inspired little wine bar with its long and varied wine list, complimentary olives and breads, jazz soundtrack and friendly staff. Strangely enough, given all the more dazzling visual, auditory and culinary goodies on offer here, one of the things I like most about this place is the fact that the key for the ladies' room can be found, freely available to borrowing as needed, attached to a large stainless steel cooking spoon on a small table by the side door. I think it's the incongruity of it that I like...
Head a little to the east by walking down William Street and up Victoria Street in Darlinghurst and you'll find the Hare Krishna-owned and run Govinda's. The fitout of this restaurant isn't particularly inviting, but once you start on their vegetarian, all-you-can-eat buffet, believe you me, the last thing you'll be thinking about is the decor. While the food is spectacular, the real master stroke of this little place is the fact that on the floor above the restaurant there is an in-house movie theatre. So when you've finished all-you-can-eating at the restaurant, it's only a short walk up the stairs to collapse on one of the softly-cushioned, reclining sofas in front of a movie.
While you're in the area you might like to visit the Victoria Room, also in Darlinghurst, and which, unlike Govinda's is decor-ed up to the nines. If you can ignore the sensation that if you've made a mistake with the address you might be about to find yourself somewhere rather ... unsavoury, shall we say? - once you've climbed to the top of the stairs you'll find yourself apparently back in India around the 1860s. Girls, you'll wish you'd worn a pretty dress, and boys, you'll ache for a ... hat and a rifle and, when you get up to leave, will find yourself vaguely looking for something until you realise that you have not in fact been tiger shooting and so there is no need for you to look for its skin to take home with you.
Back into the CBD and wandering down towards Darling Harbour you'll find Chinatown and the Chinese gardens. While Chinatown comes into its own during the Chinese New Year Festival from late January to early February, it's endlessly busy and interesting at other times as well. I rather like to wander down there and eat things I don't know the names of as a bit of an antidote to ordinary life. At the same time or separately you might like to visit the Chinese Gardens, which you'll find between Chinatown and Darling Harbour itself, which features all the best of traditional Chinese garden design and is therefore very beautiful and very serene. It is a strange feeling to look over the walls of this peaceful little place to see the skyscrapers of the CBD peering back in at you.
If you head now to the north (and I know this feels like a wild goose chase, and I could probably have written this in an order which required less imaginary walking, but if you'll just keep on, just a little bit further ... ), you will find the Fratelli Fresh Ristorante / Mercato / Bar on Bridge Street which (I have to admit) I haven't yet had an opportunity to eat at, but it took me about a year of walking past it on the way from my office to the train station to realise that it was in fact something other than a basement. Located underneath the rather swish Steersons Steakhouse, which appears to cater exclusively to the large appetites and larger wallets of the city's meat-hungry male financiers, you get to this entirely unconventional Sydney eatery by slipping down a short staircase, beneath an arch so low you have to remember to watch your head. At the bottom of the staircase, you find yourself in what feels like a mixture of cathedral crypt and grocery shop and bar and woodfired pizza place, all smelling incongruously like a home kitchen. As I say, even though I haven't actually eaten here, I like the fact that this little place exists - just checking out the fresh produce and flowers on their market stand (which can be glimpsed by peering down through the windows which are at about ankle-height) on the way home gives me a warm little glow.
There are of course countless other treasures to be found in this ever-changing city (not least the gardens, which I will probably write about some other day), but I think the places I've listed here are pretty good and well worth a visit if you haven't visited them already.