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Australia's top 100 restaurants

Terry Durack and Jill Dupleix

Restaurateur Andrew McConnell.
Restaurateur Andrew McConnell.Ken Irwin

Professional restaurant reviewers: step away from the table. The inaugural Australian Financial Review Australia's Top Restaurant Awards is the first to be decided by the chefs and restaurateurs, not the critics. Granted, the 500 top restaurants in Australia invited to vote were originally selected by a panel of Good Food Guide editors, critics and industry observers from across Australia, but from there on in, it was all about the restaurateurs and the chefs, with the results announced at a glittering, Mumm-fuelled ceremony on Monday night at Crown Melbourne.

How it works

Dan Hong at Mr Wong.
Dan Hong at Mr Wong.Edwina Pickles
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Each chef or restaurateur voted for his or her top 10 restaurants from across the country, in order from one to 10. Those 50,000 votes were then sorted by the incomprehensible Schulze Sequential Dropping method in a complex algorithm to provide us with The Top 100 in order of preference.

What happens when chefs turn critics?

Do they just dob in their best mates, or their favourite late-night diners? Could Sydney's Golden Century or Melbourne's Belle's Hot Chicken scoop the No. 1 spot? We prayed they would take it seriously, think about who they respect, who was really cutting it, what restaurants they genuinely enjoyed, and why. In other words, we hoped they would think like critics. And they did. They threw out dead wood, gave a leg up to a whole new generation of individual, independent young chefs – and – chefs being chefs - tipped a hat to their fave late-night spots. This is twice as much fun as The World's 50 Best Restaurants, and a lot closer to home.

A vegetarian dish from Brae.
A vegetarian dish from Brae.Supplied

It's the Year of Sepia

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According to industry goss, it was always going to be about Sepia, Attica, Quay and Brae. In the end, it is Sydney's Sepia, recently cited by New York's Eric Ripert​ as one of the five best restaurants in the world, that caps off a golden 12 months by being named No. 1, nudging Melbourne's acclaimed Attica into second place. Quay is No. 3 in the Top 100, and Dan Hunter's regional Victorian restaurant Brae is a headline-making No. 4. These are our most creative, polished, original restaurants – and interestingly, also the restaurants breaking on to the international radar.

Not just fine-diners

Right up there at No. 5 is the buzzy, glamorous Cutler & Co in Melbourne, with another Andrew McConnell restaurant, Cumulus Inc at No. 7 Wow. Then – out of the blue - comes the small but perfectly formed Sixpenny in suburban Sydney at No. 8, and Sydney's neo-Cantonese Mr Wong from the Merivale Group at No. 9.

Big on Vic & NSW, but still national

Victoria and New South Wales each claim five of the top 10 spots. Of the inaugural Top 100, 45 are from NSW, with 37 from VIC. SA and WA have five each, Queensland, three, and Tasmania, 2. One restaurant in the ACT made it into the top 100, the wine-obsessed, high-level Aubergine.

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Young guns to the fore

A whole new generation of restaurants received gongs, including Ester, Cafe Paci, 10 William Street, Moon Park, Cho Cho San, LuMi and Sixpenny from Sydney; Town Mouse, Saint Crispin, Estelle, Lee Ho Fook from Melbourne; Franklin from Hobart, and Africola from Adelaide.

Conversely, it wouldn't be a list of Australia's Top restaurants without Tetsuya's (No. 10), the Flower Drum (No. 11) and Rockpool (No. 12), Cafe Di Stasio (No. 20) and France-Soir (No. 40).

Some surprises, some givens

Two major serial restaurateurs - Neil Perry and Melbourne's uber-popular Andrew McConnell - did swimmingly on the bragging-rights scale with a complete handful (five) each. But wait. Who knew Sydney's Yoshii Japanese (No. 55) was so popular with chefs? And where is Sydney's Four in Hand, or Melbourne's Rosetta, filled with industry players every chef's night off?

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Best of state and territory

Those clever algorithms also threw up the top scorers per state and territory. Your bucket list across Australia should now include Restaurant Amuse in Perth, Magill Estate Restaurant in Adelaide, Esquire in Brisbane, Aubergine in Canberra, Yotts Greek Taverna in Darwin, Sepia in Sydney, Attica in Melbourne, and Franklin in Tasmania, which automatically moves to our most southern state's top slot after the closure of Garagistes in April.

Out of town

Where there is good food, chefs will be there. Dan Hunter's ground-breaking Brae at Birregurra leads the regional restaurants on the Top 100 list, followed by Lake House in Daylesford at No. 30, Biota Dining in Bowral at No. 31, Wasabi Restaurant & Bar in Noosa at No. 53, Provenance in Beechworth at No. 62, Hentley Farm in the Barossa at No. 66, Vasse Felix in the Margaret River at No. 77, and Ten Minutes By Tractor in the Mornington Peninsula at No. 94.

The wash-up?

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It seems chefs and critics agree on what makes a restaurant great. The food and service; the lighting and design; the way things are handled when something goes wrong; the feel of a linen napkin in your lap or the buzz of a craft beer bar; those thousand and one little details that all add up to a seamless whole.

And there's something else we agree on – the joy of the Golden Century and Belle's Hot Chicken, No. 37 and No. 79 respectively.

The Australian Financial Review Australia's Top Restaurants presented by Qantas and Vittoria Coffee is out now. For the full results, and for details of the special dining events running May 19-31, see australiastoprestaurants.com

The top 50

1 Sepia NSW
2 Attica VIC
3 Quay NSW
4 Brae VIC
5 Cutler & Co VIC
6 Vue de Monde VIC
7 Cumulus Inc. VIC
8 sixpenny NSW
9 Mr. Wong NSW
10 Tetsuya's NSW
11 Flower Drum VIC
12 Rockpool NSW
13 Bentley Restaurant & Bar NSW
14 ester NSW
15 MoVida, Melbourne VIC
16 momofuku seiobo NSW
17 Garagistes TAS
18 The Town Mouse VIC
19 Cafe Paci NSW
20 Cafe Di Stasio VIC
21 10 William St. NSW
22 Saint Crispin VIC
23 Porteno NSW
24 Supernormal VIC
25 est. NSW
26 The Bridge Room NSW
27 Estelle VIC
28 Lee Ho Fook VIC
29 Rockpool Bar & Grill, Sydney NSW
30 Lake House VIC
31 Biota Dining NSW
32 Billy Kwong NSW
33 Marque NSW
34 Franklin TAS
35 Fratelli Paradiso NSW
36 esquire QLD
37 Golden Century NSW
38 Monopole NSW
39 Sean's Panaroma NSW
40 France-Soir VIC
41 Chin Chin VIC
42 Rockpool Bar & Grill, Melbourne VIC
43 Coda VIC
44 Magill Estate Restaurant SA
45 Restaurant Amuse WA
46 Bar Lourinha VIC
47 Orana SA
48 The Apollo NSW
49 Lau's Family Kitchen VIC
50 ezard VIC

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Terry DurackTerry Durack is the chief restaurant critic for The Sydney Morning Herald and Good Food.
Jill DupleixJill Dupleix is a Good Food contributor and reviewer who writes the Know-How column.

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