The Diddy (Longueville Sporting Club)

The Longueville Sporting Club, known to everyone as the Diddy, has been on the Longueville peninsula since 1938 — a bowls club that has matured into the Lower North Shore's best beer garden with actual greens. Lusso Kitchen took on the food side in 2021 and runs a menu that swings between Italian pasta, Thai curries and pub-bistro staples, with no obvious connective tissue beyond reliability. Live acoustic musos play weekend afternoons three to six, and Thursday trivia is free to enter.

Dogs get the run of both bowling greens — off-leash down on the lower green, on-leash at the tables up top. It's a rare Sydney setup: grass, beer and a dog under the chair, with a ferry on Burns Bay as the occasional backdrop.