Australia’s top 500 restaurants voting
There are many newcomers in the third annual Australian Financial Review Australia’s Top Restaurants list.
Food critic and awards co-director Terry Durack says the new entrants are all about a new period of change and opportunity.
"Out of the 500 on the list, 120 restaurants are new," Durack told the Australian Financial Review. "The last year has been one of the busiest that I can remember; it was a real challenge to squeeze in all the new openings."
The Australia's Top Restaurants awards are presented by Qantas.
It is the only national awards program of its kind that sees winners decided by votes of the nation's best chefs and restaurateurs themselves.
In other words, Australia’s best restaurants are chosen by their peers.
There are two stages.
First, there’s the initial 500 restaurants.
These are selected by an industry panel across Australia, co-ordinated co-directors Durack and Jill Dupleix.
"It's a mix that makes it quintessentially Australian, and fun," Dupleix told the AFR.
And then comes the serious business where each chef or restaurateur in the top 500 casts their vote for their top 10 restaurants.
All that leads to the big event, the final selection of 100 announced at a gala occasion at The Star on June 19.
"The chefs choose the restaurants they respect, ones they've been to and eaten at," Durack told the AFR. "The restaurants can be leading the way in Australia or just be a little bar with food … It can be a great Chinese or Turkish restaurant, doing just the one thing very well."
So which restaurants are in the running?
Durack and Dupleix have told the AFR that everyone is talking about the seafood-centric Saint Peter in Sydney's Paddington, owned by Josh and Julie Niland.
It is one of the 120 new entries.
Josh Niland says he’s used to the pressure of expectation.
"I've always given everything that I've got to my work, sometimes to the detriment of my personal time," he told the AFR. "To avoid mediocrity in this industry, you have to work your guts out, on a daily basis. It's unrelenting. As much you can teach a chef to cook a piece of fish, it's difficult to teach intuition.
"Expectation doesn't bother me, I just make sure I am doing a good job in my mind and my staff are happy."
by Leon Gettler, March 23rd 2017
