Food: Bennelong Sydney Australia

Bennelong serves to celebrate The Sydney Opera House and its extraordinary architecture by offering a culturally significant and inspiring menu showcasing a most magnificent production of Australian food and wine.

Sometime over 200 years ago, Bennelong Point was a tidal rock island in the heart of the Gadigal lands. It has been said this was a location for Aboriginal women to congregate on the rising tide, eat shellfish by the fire and tell stories.

Bennelong Point is recorded as the largest midden found in Australia. Sometime after British settlement, these midden shells were burned and crushed to manufacture lime required to build Government house.

Government House soon became a centre for communication between Aborigines and colonists, mostly due to a man called Bennelong who befriended Governor Phillip and was the first Aboriginal person to live voluntarily in the settlement. 

Bennelong came from the Wangal clan on the southern side of the Parramatta River, and was married to a woman by the name of Barangaroo. Bennelong, who was a great dancer and mimic, became a figurehead for relations between Aborigines and the colonists, and lived in a house built on this harbour-point.

Bennelong Restaurant is built on a site enriched with history of communal eating and telling stories. We invite you to create your own story in one of the most recognisable buildings in the world.