Six years after its last Australian restaurants closed, Sizzler has a return address: a new restaurant inside NH Sydney Airport in Mascot, planned for 2027. The project is also a useful reminder that Sizzler’s story now extends well beyond the American steakhouses where it began.
Minor Hotels and Minor Food plan to bring the restaurant to a new hotel at 102–106 Robey Street, near Sydney Airport. The return was first reported in February; Minor confirmed the hotel’s 2027 schedule in March. Minor founder and chairman Bill Heinecke has discussed more Australian Sizzlers, initially inside hotels and open to the public, with standalone locations possible later. No additional site or opening date has been announced. The airport restaurant’s menu and prices are still unknown.
Sizzler began in Culver City, California, in 1958, when Del and Helen Johnson offered steak in a more accessible setting. Jim Collins bought the business in the late 1960s and expanded it widely. The self-service salad bar became as recognizable as the grill: guests could make an entire meal of soups, salads, pasta and dessert, or add the bar to a cooked-to-order steak or seafood dinner. The cheese toast developed a following of its own.
Collins Foods opened Australia’s first Sizzler in the Brisbane suburb of Annerley in 1985. The Australian network reached 74 restaurants by 1992. Meanwhile, Sizzler had arrived in Japan in 1991, and Minor began operating the brand in Thailand in 1992. The concept had become a familiar family meal across several countries, even as each market developed its own version of the bar.
That growth did not continue evenly. The U.S. business went through a major restructuring in 1996. A management group bought its U.S. and Puerto Rico operations in 2011, separating them from the overseas franchise business. Australian operator Collins Foods classified Sizzler as outside its core growth strategy in 2015 and closed 19 restaurants before the pandemic. COVID-era losses prompted the closure of its final nine Australian locations by November 2020. Sizzler USA filed separately for Chapter 11 protection that September.
In 2023, Thailand-based Minor acquired Collins Foods’ remaining international Sizzler interests, including the Australian trademarks and the Japanese and Thai franchisor entities. Minor introduced the brand in Vietnam with franchise partner Goldsun Food the following year. The Sydney restaurant is therefore an expansion of Minor’s international operation, not a project of Sizzler USA.
Today, the balance of locations is unexpectedly international. Minor reported 66 Sizzler branches in Thailand in July 2026. Japan’s operator lists 12, including a new Oimachi Tracks restaurant that opened in March, and the brand is also present in Vietnam. By comparison, location-data firm ScrapeHero counted 71 restaurants in the United States and Puerto Rico in June, 49 of them in California. Those counts come from different organizations and dates, and no reconciled global total is available. Even so, the reported overseas footprint exceeds the U.S. and Puerto Rico estimate.
The salad bar remains the shared language, though its vocabulary changes. Minor is testing a Thailand format called Sizzler Specials with more than 120 items and a separate Sun & Moon format with service until midnight. Japan’s new Oimachi restaurant advertises more than 70 salad bar selections and unlimited cheese toast made to order. The current U.S. menu includes prepared salads, soups, a hot bar with wings, tacos and pasta, and soft serve. Nobody has said which of these arrangements Sydney will adopt. That is one detail an Australian Sizzler regular will reasonably want settled before planning a return visit.
In the United States, renewal has taken the form of restaurant renovations. Fresno and Visalia reopened with upgrades in 2024; Downey followed in May 2025 with an expanded Unlimited Salad Bar and dessert station. Sizzler executives told QSR that nine restaurants had been renovated over two years and that sales at the updated sites were rising. The company has also faced closures: the last Phoenix-area Sizzler shut in July 2025, leaving Flagstaff as Arizona’s remaining location. No recent wave of newly built U.S. Sizzlers has been established.
Sydney will be a new Sizzler built into a new hotel, rather than the reopening of an old suburban restaurant. For now, it is the only Australian location with a disclosed address. Whether the salad bar, cheese toast and grill arrive in a familiar combination remains to be seen; across Asia and the United States, those pieces are still finding new arrangements.
