Melbourne for Christmas lunch... Sydney for NYE

[dallardice]

Hi there, we are spending our honeymoon in Oz at the end of the year and are looking for a great Christmas lunch or dinner in Melbourne and a good restaurant to watch the fireworks in Sydney on NYE.

Any suggestions would be welcomed, but also pointers to resto review sites - in doing our research we've found endless advertising sites which regurgitate marketing content, but if there's a good critical place to read restaurant reviews we'd really appreciate it.

Favourites for Melbourne so far are Circa or Vue de Monde but we're not sure if they're open on Christmas Day. Friends recommended buffet at the Plane Tree Cafe in the Hyatt but we'd prefer not to have a buffet.

In Sydney the view is more important than the food (we'll leave Tetsuya for another night) but we were thinking maybe Wildfire, Guillaume at Bennelong or Altitude in the Shangri-La...

...what do you think? It's very difficult to be thinking about such things so early, but for both I'm guessing we need to book Sept/Oct time...

[Shinboners]

You might find the following articles useful when it comes to Melbourne on Christmas Day. France Soir is a favourite restaurant of mine, but I haven't been to their Christmas lunch.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/epicure/fine...2421577553.html

The following article by the late Mietta O'Donnell was written in 1998, but again, you'll probably find a few good ideas.

http://www.miettas.com.au/restaurants/rest_96-00/xmas.html