Raes

Raes Dining Room is the institutional luxury anchor of Byron Bay. Opened in the 1990s as a small Wategos-Beach hotel and continuously operated since, currently in second-generation Raes-family ownership, and the winner of Gourmet Traveller's 2025 Boutique Hotel of the Year. The dining room sits directly on Wategos Beach (the small bay at the eastern tip of the village) with a 270-degree view of the Pacific. The restaurant has retained two hats in the Australian Good Food Guide 2025. The country's highest non-Michelin restaurant rating.

Executive Chef Jason Saxby's cooking is contemporary modern-Australian with deep Mediterranean influence. The seven-course tasting rotates seasonally; signatures highlight the finest flavours of the Northern Rivers region. Including a hand-cut Northern Rivers tuna tartare with passionfruit and biquinho pepper; a slow-cooked Bangalow lamb shoulder with thyme and Mediterranean olive oil; a wood-fired Pacific-coast snapper with samphire and lemon confit; a hand-rolled tagliolino with Northern Rivers black truffle; the famous 'pavlova Raes' for the dessert course.

The wine list runs to 700 references with deep Northern Rivers smallholder coverage, a serious mainland-Australian section (Margaret River Chardonnay, Hunter Valley Semillon, Yarra Valley Pinot Noir), and a tightly chosen Champagne section.

The dining room and beach-front terrace together hold sixty-four covers. The western terrace is the experience, with a direct view of the Wategos Beach surf and a kitchen that times the dessert course with the Pacific sunset. Service is hotel-grade. Captains rotate from a year-round seasonal pool.

Raes is the proposal-grade table on the Australian east coast. The Wategos Beach front terrace at sunset is among the most photographed dinner views in the country, the two-hatted institutional pedigree settles the credibility question, and the seven-course pacing accommodates a slow-moving evening. Book the corner two-top on the western edge of the terrace.