Fleet

Fleet is the chef-driven small-format dining room of chef Josh Lewis. Opened in 2017 in Brunswick Heads, a small fishing village 15 kilometres north of Byron Bay. And is one of the Northern Rivers' most innovative contemporary kitchens. The restaurant occupies a converted small-town shopfront with hand-carved native-timber walls, a single open kitchen at the back, and twenty-eight seats across nine tables.

Lewis's cooking is contemporary Australian with deep Northern Rivers regional sourcing. The seven-course tasting menu rotates daily based on the morning's producer deliveries; signatures rotate but typically include a hand-cut Northern Rivers tuna tartare with biquinho pepper and finger lime; a slow-cooked Bangalow lamb shoulder with bush tomato; a wood-fired Pacific-coast snapper; a hand-rolled native-bushfood pasta; the famous 'native-honey panna cotta' for the dessert course.

The wine list is one of the most interesting in Australia. 280 references built around natural-wine smallholders from the Adelaide Hills, Yarra Valley, and the emerging Tasmanian biodynamic scene. Glass pours start at A$14.

Service is genuinely small-team. Lewis himself runs the open kitchen and walks the room before the cheese course; the captain has worked the property since 2018. Fleet is the dining room that visiting Sydney and Melbourne chefs use as the canonical Northern Rivers culinary destination.

Fleet is the easy-first-date room in the Northern Rivers. Quieter than Raes, less formal than Karkalla, and the daily-changing seven-course tasting menu is genuinely conversation-worthy. Book the corner two-top by the open kitchen.