The Riverview Hotel

The Riverview has been trading at the water's edge between Balmain and Birchgrove since 1880, when publican Thomas Norton put up the Federation Arts and Crafts corner in painted brick. Dawn Fraser, the Olympic swimmer, ran the place from 1978 to 1983. The Balmain Pub Group took over a couple of decades later and put the pub through a gastro-pub reno in 2008. The layout now splits three ways: main bar at ground level, a private-dining lounge alongside, and Birchgrove Restaurant upstairs with a leafy rooftop courtyard looking over the peninsula. The kitchen runs modern Australian via contemporary British, with wood-fired pizzas and weekend live music from seven-thirty.

Dogs are welcome in the downstairs lounge — the casual corner of the ground floor that the venue itself calls out as open to kids and dogs. It's a heritage Balmain pub that has held three generations of regulars without losing the corner-pub feel.