Australian chefs and restaurateurs grapple with our absence from the world rankings

Mark Best says Australian chefs are like the Socceroos

So good, in fact, that he is planning to operate the Fat Duck here for six months next year before launching Dinner, the restaurant that will be a permanent fixture at Melbourne’s Crown, from late-ish 2015.

“What’s happened in Australia in the past five years is quite remarkable,” he says. “It’s the biggest food explosion I’ve ever seen in any country.

“The restaurant and wine scene has been booming here for a long time, but it’s actually the general public’s interest that I think is such a big thing.”

About the same time, Tourism Australia launched the latest weapon in its assault on the world’s travellers. Restaurant Australia is a promotional push for the growing league of well-heeled tourists who work their itineraries around meal times in good restaurants. The pitch? Come, eat out, see a nation alive with restaurant talent.

So we’re all feeling pretty good about the scene here, relative to the rest of the world, right? Well should we?

By one measure at least, we’re actually going backwards.

The S. Pellegrino-sponsored World’s 50 Best Restaurants list, the annual Woodstock for chefs held in London each April, delivered a modest-at-best report card this year, relative to previous efforts (the awards are in their 11th year). Only Melbourne’s Attica made the 50 for 2014 with Quay — held by many as an Australian benchmark — relegated to the second tier, at 60. Where were Marque and Tetsuya’s — players in both tiers in years gone by? Where was Momofuku Seiobo, a second-tier entrant last year?

And that’s before we consider restaurants never recognised at all: Vue de Monde, for example; Bridge Room or Sepia (the new Rockpool and Brae are too young to have been considered for this year)?

The problem? The W50Best system is the only attempt at benchmarking restaurants internationally, the measuring of the essentially unmeasurable. While international guide publishers, such as Gault et Millau, have come to Australia, their brief has been parochial. Zagat announced an Australian version of its crowd-sourced guide in 2012, but it came to nothing more than hot air.

The W50Best system has gained such immense media traction because it quantifies, pitting restaurants from every corner of the globe against each other in a shootout for the Best 50 list or, the consolation prize, the 51-100.

Never before has something so subjective been so clinically ranked.

There’s another problem. Novelty now appears to supersede excellence.

I’ve eaten at six restaurants in the 2014 50 Best list; three in the second tier (51-100).

On the basis of being “best”, there are probably 10 Australian restaurants, if not more, that would sit comfortably among the second highest echelon; on the basis of who’s there now, half belong in the top tier. In my opinion.

But are our restaurants really any good? Should we even try to compare apples with pears, oranges and ­bananas?

“Rating restaurants in league tables like we do with football teams doesn’t make sense,” says Frank Camorra, chef and partner in the MoVida Group and a frequent traveller in Europe. “People experience restaurants subjectively, they don’t play against each other in a round-robin competition over a season.”

He says there is no doubt Australia has one of the world’s best restaurant offers.

“I’m not talking about the pointy end of innovative high-end restaurants but when you take the industry as a whole I think without doubt Australia provides higher standards of food and service than almost anywhere. Although I do concede service in the US is generally exceptional … it’s just a pity about the food.”

Neil Perry, one of many high-end Australian chefs who has diversified into burgers to keep the cash flowing, travels constantly and has almost certainly been to more of the world’s great

“There are several Oz restaurants that would fit nicely in the top 100 there is no doubt,” Perry says.

“The top 50 is a very nice list and interesting, however it is not the bible and at best is subjective. You would need more Asian restaurants in it for it to be a true guide, especially Japanese and China, and you would need to place Australia where Dubai is, geographically, for it to be fair.”

He says quality ingredients, “our ability to make great sense of our relationship with Asia”, and a well-trained and travelled chef workforce are our strengths. “And our floor and wine staff are catching up quickly.”

Chris Lucas, a Melbourne businessman and restaurant entrepreneur who travels abroad for at least four weeks every year, eating out constantly, describes our restaurateurs as “brave”, pushing the boundaries in almost every area of hospitality.

He also believes that at the highest end, compared with three-star Michelin restaurants, they are cheap. Our great strength, says the well-eaten owner of Chin Chin (among others), is our lack of culinary baggage.

“Australia is not hostage to the historical and cultural constraints of, for example, the European system with their formal and closed-shop culinary hierarchy,” Lucas says. Individuals there, he says, are almost forced to conform to “an outdated and restrictive culinary structure” that inhibits diversity and energy and enshrines conservatism.

“Australia has a sense of freedom to create like no other nation, and it’s evidenced by our extraordinary depth and vibrancy.

“While many fairly average international restaurants gain international recognition, some of Australia’s restaurants, if they were in NYC or London, would easily match any of these so-called world culinary giants.”

Like most who spoke to The Weekend Australian for this story, Lucas is critical of the W50Best concept. “To me the idea of ranking restaurants is simply a flawed exercise,” he says.

“The very thought of being able to somehow conjure a definitive and objective measurable comparison of great restaurants from around the entire globe makes it an even more irrelevant marketing exercise.”

Another area of consensus? The importance of Asia to us as both a source of inspiration and a market.

Our strength, says Lucas, is our position “as part of the world’s most exciting region”.

Chef Mark Best, of Marque in Sydney and Pei Modern in Melbourne, agrees. Marque appeared for three consecutive years in the 100 Best list (2010-12) before slipping out.

“I really think we should be part of Asia’s 50 Best given we are geographically part of Asia and it is our largest international market. It just makes more sense.”

He describes the W50Best system as cumbersome and needing to be broken up into regions. “To be honest I think we are a bit like the Socceroos in the World Cup: we play our hearts out but don’t have the population, infrastructure or money to be truly competitive on the world stage.”

Melbourne restaurateur Andrew McConnell points out the obvious issues for Australia with the W50Best system.

“Our distance and lack of judges travelling to Australia each year may exclude many restaurants,” he says. “On the whole, though, I think the guide is relevant and a good snapshot of what is happening right now in the restaurant world; a qualified and broad zeitgeist assessment.”

Peter Gilmore, of Quay, takes a glass-half-full view of our place in the world. “We comfortably sit at the very top end of the world creative dining scene,” says the internationally acclaimed chef.

“Our strength is in our diversity, open mindedness to new flavours and experiences, and a wealth of world culinary traditions to draw inspiration from and amazing produce and passionate people.”

But like everyone we spoke to, Gilmore identifies Australian labour costs, which determine the ratio of staff to customers, as an impediment to competing with restaurants abroad.

“We have a tougher gig which means we have to be more resourceful.”

And I think most who travel would agree Australia’s chefs and restaurateurs are nothing if not resourceful.

Cutting out the middle man

One of my most enjoyable meals this year was at Singapore’s Burnt Ends, a Singaporean-owned restaurant based on a Spanish progenitor with an Australian head chef.

Other than the pleasure of eating food — almost literally — at the coalface, where charcoal, embers and smoke are used to heat, cook and flavour just about everything, the owners had developed a concept that almost does away with waiters. And apparently, waiters — good ones — are a rare commodity in upwardly mobile Singapore, where the young aspire to more than service.

At Burnt Ends, you sit at a long bar with the chefs and all their gear, crockery, cutlery, opposite. When something is cooked over coals — say, a scallop on the half shell, to which XO is added — it is the chef who hands over the plate. All a waiter does is bus finished plates back to the dish station.

It’s a savvy solution to a staff problem; it’s a model that, given the cost of labour here, could be copied to provide brilliant food at reasonable prices. As they do at Burnt Ends.

When Down Under is too far

The France-based Gault & Millau is set to be the first influential international guidebook to launch in Australia. This November, Gault & Millau will publish its inaugural guide to Sydney and Melbourne restaurants, following on from the launch of its Sydney guidebook last year. Since the 1980s, Gault & Millau has expanded into Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, The Netherlands and Italy.

The most famous guide of all, Michelin, does not cover Australia. During the past decade, the France-based company has extended its reach beyond Europe to include Britain and Ireland, key cities in America, Hong Kong and Macau, and Japan.

The Miele Guide to Asia, launched in 2008, does not extend to Australia.

The New York-based Zagat guide, based on user-generated content, made noises about launching in Australia a couple of years ago, but we’re still waiting for the follow-up. - Necia Wilden

Source:  The Australian - 2 August 2014