Australia’s top restaurants spread far and wide
It now seems foodies will have to travel many kilometres to get to the best meals.
The 100 top listings for Australia’s Top Restaurants Awards program for 2018 lists 23 regional restaurants.
And these new regional restaurants are not new just cooking city food in the country. They're embedded in their own place and they source food from local, small-scale growers.
And the creativity is driven by the seasonality,
South Australia, with its access to some of Australia’s best wine regions has developed some premium dining destinations with the obvious benefit of their proximity to Adelaide.
Just in McLaren Vale alone, there is the architecturally distinctive d'Arenberg Cube Restaurant, Maxwell restaurant at Maxwell Wines, and the Italian-inspired Bocca di Lupa at the family-owned Mitolo Winery.
Others include 1889 Enoteca at Woolloongabba in Queensland and A La Grecque on the Great Ocean Road in Airey’s Inlet.
A big strength of these regional restaurants lies in the closeness of the communities.
"The community here is so tight-knit, you need to be introduced to the local growers by your suppliers, and they need to like you enough to want to do that," Bocca di Lupo's chef, Tom Jack told the Australian Financial Review. "I'm the new kid on the fine-dining block so it was difficult to wedge in, but everybody has been so accommodating."
His menu is drawn from the surrounding hills and vales.
He says the drawcards include the local beetroots, suckling pigs, Port Lincoln kingfish and the "massively under-rated" local mulloway. These are the key attractions of his menu.
This trend towards regional restaurants was forecast in The Australian Financial Review’s top restaurants awards with a crack team of critics and editors compiling an overall list of the top 500 restaurants in Australia.
Now the chefs and restaurateurs will get to vote on their top 10 restaurants.
All will be revealed at the 2018 Australia's Top 100 Restaurants Awards, to be announced on June 25.
5th April 2018
