A Newtown favourite, The Pie Tin’s fridges and ovens are constantly chock-a-block with delicious, artisanal pies. The offerings here are rotational depending on what’s fresh and in-season, and each pie is handcrafted in-house and baked daily. Pair a beef brisket with a Bavarian lager, a chicken and leek with a chardonnay, or a coconut crème with a cappuccino – whatever you’re yearning for, The Pie Tin’s got the solution. The Pie Tin may be the place to eat the best pie in Sydney.

Hand-layered, organic ingredients and real butter – and that’s just the pastry. What the folks at Infinity Bakery pack inside their pies elevates them from merely some of the best meat pies in Sydney to truly exceptional creations. Always demanding the best ingredients and never shy to mix it up, the aromas drifting from the whitewashed walls of the flagship store in Paddington attract pastry lovers from miles around.

Black Star Pastry has long been keeping pie-lovers weak at the knees with their lamb shank & red wine pie, often toted as Sydney’s most exalted pastry offering. Yet some other members of the Black Star royal pie family – notably the kangaroo and the beer & brisket – have recently made moves to come from behind and snatch the crown for their own. If it comes to blows, we’d go to battle with these pastry titans any day.

Bourke Street Bakery has come a long way from humble origins as a rustic corner store bakery in Surry Hills. Considered one of Sydney’s most iconic eateries, there are now eleven locations across the city, each remaining true to the rustic neighbourhood charm that bolstered their success. Everything is handmade with the freshest ingredients and the pies are no exception – the beef brisket, mushroom & red wine pie stands out even in this Olympian company. Bourke Street Bakery have the best meat pie Sydney has to offer.

This culinary institution on the Northern Beaches has been refining the art of the perfect meat pie since 1948. A jaunt to Collaroy will quickly solidify your opinion of The Upper Crust as one of the best pie shops in Sydney. The menu is stacked but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who does the classics as well as these guys. Hook into a chunky steak if you need further convincing.

Few Aussie pie shops have made as big a splash as Harry’s. The original Woolloomooloo food truck is home to Sydney’s original late night feed and kept the working class fed through the depression and war years. In the 70 years since, this iconic caravan has expanded to locations across the city and still claims its signature Harry’s Pie as the best meat pie in Sydney.

Sink into a Chesterfield sofa and hook into a generous meat pie at York 75, Sydney’s favourite collegiate sports bar. With twenty screens to peruse, taxidermy trophies on the walls and rich mahogany furniture, it won’t take long to see that this place is a big deal.

This inner-city bakery shimmers like a mirage on the horizon for those stranded in the doldrums of the work week. Flour and Stone offer an enormous selection of sweet goodies that somewhat overshadow the savoury offerings in terms of sheer volume. But the excellent meat pies are not to be outshone even by this enticing range of top-notch baked goods. A mid-afternoon coffee and the lamb, potato and rosemary pie on a bench in Hyde Park sounds like a pretty good deviation from the workday to us.

Pull up a stool in Hotel Palisade’s masterfully restored vintage public house and get a feel for Old Sydney Town as you sip on a pint of local craft beer and rip into one of the best meat pies in Sydney. Although you’ll fork out a little more dough for the steak & Guinness pot pie, its tender chunks beef and rich gravy encased in flaky pastry, perched on a bed of mashed potato and topped with peas will not disappoint.

Sydney is spoiled with some seriously talented bakers and pastry chefs and you’d struggle to find a duo more dedicated to culinary perfection than the fellas behind Textbook Boulangerie Patisserie. Their chicken, mushroom and truffle pie is ideal for a cold winter’s day, and you can bet each are prepared and presented with textbook perfection with not a crumb out of place.

It’s a big deal to claim the best meat pie in Sydney, yet Glenorie Bakery has done just that. And, they have the credentials to back it up. Their signature beef and gravy meat pie was voted no.1 in Sydney in 2007 and 2011 and heads a stellar line-up of crowd pleasers and pastry classics.

Famished? A hop over the harbour bridge to Rag and Famish Hotel on Sydney’s North Shore is a sure-fire cure for that pie-sized hole in your appetite. A serving of salad (good for you), hot chips (that’s more like it) or mash, peas & gravy (there ya go) accompany their famous crispy lid pies. Choosing between beef & Guinness, chicken & leek or cottage pie and tracking down an empty table at this busy Sydney bistro-pub will be the toughest decisions you’ll face all day.

Tucked into pristine bushland just outside of Sydney, Pie in the Sky Cowan is the perfect pit stop as you cruise north on the Old Pacific Highway. These no-nonsense pies are the real article. They’re prepared fresh daily with locally sourced produce and pastry that’s made in-house. With over 20 different beef, chicken, lamb and veggie pies to choose from, there’s something to keep the whole tribe satisfied. A standout? Can’t go past the beef, bacon and cheese.

Sydney’s oft-lauded brewpub, The Lord Nelson Brewery Hotel, serves up a helluva meat pie that pairs rather well with a cold pint of their excellent Three Sheets pale ale. There are few better places for a meal on a brisk winter’s day than next to the fireplace, under the ancient ceiling beams and hand cut sandstone walls of Sydney’s oldest continually licenced hotel. A setting like that, with a pie squished between mounds of mashed peas and potato and swimming in gravy and a tall beer, is hard to beat.

If Hannah’s Pies look a little familiar, chances are you’ve encountered them before under a different guise. These guys are the sole suppliers to Harry’s Café de Wheels, so it’s fair to say they have their pastry game on lockdown. Alongside this gargantuan task, they also operate a corner pie stand in Ultimo where punters can get their very own “Tiger”, straight from the source.

What more could you ask from a Sydney pub with a dedication to sourcing Aussie booze, a name that was deemed too hard-core for the NSW liquor authority’s delicate sensibilities and a fancy for Star Wars memorabilia and quirky local art? A bloody ripper meat pie, that’s what – and they’ve got that too. Of all the reasons to visit The SG, their tasty pastries are high on that list – right behind a game of arcade Donkey Kong.