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From the bar: Mark Best, asked who he thinks will win Chef of the Year, says it’s a tight race between Nicholas Hill of Porcine and South End’s Alex Tong and Hussein Sarhan. But he thinks the duo from Newtown will bring it home.
South End was awarded two hats earlier this year in its opening review by Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide editor Callan Boys. Sarhan previously cooked at produce-forward Fred’s in Paddington; Tong was sous chef at fire-licked Ester. Together, that’s one powerhouse package.
Best has picked up a few awards himself over the years, including the Guide ’s Chef of the Year in 2009, and mentored last year’s Young Chef of the Year winner Jen Kwok Lee. Will his tip be the winning one? Stay tuned to find out.
When Quay served its final course on February 14 after four decades in business, it went out on top with the Good Food Guide ’s highest ranking of three hats, a level it maintained since 2002, soon after Peter Gilmore took on the role of executive chef.
No other Sydney restaurant has come close to equalling that three-hat run, but Quay’s real legacy is its influence on Australian cuisine , produce and hospitality.
See the full timeline of Quay, and Legend Award winner Gilmore’s influence on its success, right.
The Trailblazer Award, founded in memory of Bill Granger and presented by SevenRooms, recognises an individual, team or business driving Australian food forward. The winner should have a unique point of view, embrace hospitality in its truest sense, and forge a path for others.
This year’s winner, Ahana Dutt, takes out the award for her work at her Newtown restaurant, Kolkata Social, which aims to flip the expectations of Indian cooking on their head.
The diner, which began as a social enterprise with Plate it Forward but is now under Dutt’s ownership, is less an Indian restaurant than a Bengali one, committed fiercely to the flavours and food of her heritage, yet also grounded firmly in place, spinning Kolkata through a third-culture lens. Think Davidson plum sharpening alu’r dom Hasselback potatoes (as served to tonight’s attendees), or kosha that sees retired Meredith Dairy goat cooked in a slow braise, dark and deeply spiced.
Trailblazing? Definitely. Australian diners may be increasingly fluent in the flavours of regional Italy or China, but Dutt still fends off questions about why she refuses to serve butter chicken. The chef recognises that there’s plenty of diversity in Sydney’s Indian food scene, but the broader public’s expectations, she says, can be paralysing.
Sticking to her guns at Kolkata Social is one more step to the food of Australia’s largest migrant population being celebrated in all its depth, nuance and glory.
The winner of the Legend Award has received a rock star’s reception inside Carriageworks.
As Peter Gilmore shook hands with fans and friends while approaching the podium, the entire room stood in applause.
A video played to the audience featured hundreds of photos of his food, including the famous Snow Egg dessert dish. “Seeing it like that is pretty crazy,” he said.
He thanked Leon Fink, and said he was lucky to work with hundreds of chefs in his restaurants. “God, it’s been a ride, absolutely. What can I say? This industry has given me so much, so much joy and so much love from everyone that works in this industry.”
“It hasn’t been work. It’s been my life … and an amazing amount of good fortune. And I’ve been lucky to work with some of the best people in this industry over the years.”
Gilmore paid special thanks to his wife, Kath Gilmore, “who has been my biggest support, and without her, I wouldn’t have had a normal life at all”.
In the year 2000, The Sydney Morning Herald published what could now be described as a historic food review. A young fellow running a restaurant in the furthest reaches of the northern beaches caught Terry Durack’s eye. This chap, wrote Durack, had “a real talent for sending out beautifully structured food with innate simplicity.”
With the benefit of 26 years of hindsight, we now know that Durack was onto something. Said young chap was Peter Gilmore, who went on to transform Australian dining with his tenure at Quay and Bennelong .
After earning three hats for 23 consecutive years , and winning Restaurant of the Year six times, Gilmore is now the winner of the 42nd Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide Legend Award.
As we are sure the hundreds of chefs who have passed through his kitchens and now carry on his legacy would agree, he has more than earned it. Congratulations to Peter Gilmore, whose new honour earns a standing ovation from the crowd.
Peter Fiander has applied for the Young Chef of the Year award before, so his origin story was already familiar to judges – and former winners – Lauren Eldridge, Dan Puskas, Louis Tikaram and Phil Wood: after leaving high school early, he started his career in Castle Hill at the age of 16 before going on to work at LP’s Quality Meats, Ragazzi and Porcine.
What impressed the panel this time around, however, was how he has evolved into a leader since stepping into the role of head chef at Osteria Luna .
Anyone can cook, after all, but not everyone can lead a team through the heat of service, and still find time to source whole beasts so his chefs can upgrade their butchery skills.
Fiander is a chef obsessed with the small stuff, a cook-it-from-scratch, do-it-yourself, learn-it-then-teach-it kind of cook, who wants all those steps to come together in a way that appears effortless on the plate.
Congratulations to Saint Peter restaurant manager Monique Guest, winner of the Oceania Cruises Service Excellence award.
On the plate, Josh Niland’s cooking has always been world-leading, but since the restaurant’s move to the Grand National Hotel , the story has been about how the rest of the operation has upped its game. Drinks are a huge factor (the restaurant won the Drinks List of the Year award earlier this evening), but the other side is the service, led by Guest.
A UK native, Guest came up in the bustle of London’s pub scene, quit the city for Michelin-starred The Fordwich Arms in Kent, then joined Quay as a sommelier before signing with Tetsuya’s before its closure.
At Saint Peter, her rise has coincided with the service reaching a world-class level. Guest is someone who gets the details right, brings her team with her, and never loses sight of the big picture.
From the crowd: The biggest roar so far in the ceremony is a tie between Service Excellence finalists Traci Trinder of Osteria Mucca and Monique Guest of Saint Peter, Emma Breheny reports.
Bridget Raffal and Saranya Kundasamy from Women and Revolution, The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide’s inaugural Cultural Change Champion , are onstage to present the award – and effectively pass the baton – to another wine collective.
This year’s winner, Venus Vinifera, was founded by Caitlin Baker in Canberra in 2021, recently launched in Sydney, and has plans to go nationwide in the next three years.
Like Women and Revolution, VV is a drink-minded collective with the goal of improving the prospects and education available to women in hospitality, including non-binary and transgender people.
VV has changed the conversation, first through its mentorship and education programs, and sexual assault and sexual harassment training, its Subject Matters Symposiums and drinks networking event, Frenzy.
Accepting the award onstage, Baker gives a shoutout to Women and Revolution: “VV wouldn’t have started without them.”
From the podium: The winner of the Sommelier of the Year has said it was a “huge surprise” to win the award.
Former Olympus Dining sommelier Zoe Brunton said the job was a lot of hard work, including nights spent learning geography and law.
“Being a sommelier is not always the easiest thing to do,” she said.
“There’s a lot of hard work, a lot of study, a lot of research, a lot of quiet nights … so shout out to all the sommeliers in the room who keep the standards up. I am very grateful to receive this award and be recognised.”
John Singleton’s Grand Saddles Lodge, where Brunton has been appointed sommelier, opens next week.
Troy Rhoades-Brown has championed Hunter Valley producers for the past 17 years at Muse Restaurant and, more recently, realised a long-held dream to expand his own home garden so it can inform the six-course tasting menu.
Indeed, your first course is titled “Troy’s Garden”: a seasonal cornucopia that might feature fresh purple daikon, scarlet turnip, breakfast radish, ivory kale, purple oxalis and heirloom peas.
With a dining room refresh of warm timbers, new tables and leather upholstery under way, the Regional Restaurant of the Year winner is set to become one of the state’s most special night outs for a long time to come.
There’s a lot of love in the room for Muse, the loudest applause of the ceremony so far.
Tip: Bookmark these finalists for your next weekend getaway or road trip.
