Sydney versus Melbourne – who wears the hats?

• The Age Good Food Guide: Full list of hatted restaurants
• Who got the hats in Sydney?

The clash of the titans continues as The Sydney Morning Herald and Age Good Food Guides hit the shelves.

Game on, Melbourne. Game on, Sydney. There's always been a healthy rivalry between the two states over which has the best restaurants, and now the results are in.

The annual Good Food Guides, released a week apart in Sydney and Melbourne, are a pulse-check of the restaurant industry.

Melbourne, always setting the pace for cool and casual, now boasts more three-hat restaurants collectively across metro and regional Victoria.

In fact, the number has doubled since last year, with newcomer Minamishima (The Age's Restaurant of the Year last year) gaining a third hat, and city stalwart Vue de Monde earning its third hat back. They join Attica, and Birregurra restaurant Brae on three hats. It's the first time in the Good Food Guides' history that Melbourne has more three-hat restaurants than Sydney.

The million-dollar question, though, is "why"?

Roslyn Grundy, editor of The Age Good Food Guide, says it has a lot to do with how Melbourne restaurants now set the pace and who they measure themselves against. "Melbourne restaurants strive to compete on an international scale – they're much more concerned about where they sit on the world stage than how they compare against, say, a Sydney restaurant."

Through his 30 years' experience working across The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, the Herald's chief critic, Terry Durack, has seen his fair share of action from the trenches.

"For years Melbourne followed a more European model with by far the better quality and range of medium-sized independent restaurants, while Sydney went all sunny, casual and Asian," he says. "Now Sydney is actually getting more solid, filling in the gap between high-end and low, and Melbourne is high on individual passion and craft."

Durack says Melbourne's European legacy gives it the edge when it comes to service, however. "There's an ease and grace about the young and old front-of-house professionals in Melbourne that Sydney can't quite manage yet," he says.

So while Melbourne makes inroads on a global scale, Sydney has taken to keeping it live and local, awarding more one hats and focusing on casual bar-side dining. There's a lot to be said for Sydney's coming of age when it comes to dining out on a small scale.

Big-ticket Sydney dining experiences such as those at Quay (SMH Restaurant of the Year), Sepia and Bridge Room still have an essential place on the scene, but it's places such as the Dolphin, Continental Deli Bar and Bistro (SMH Bar of the Year), Hartsyard (the darling heart of Enmore regained its one-hat status this year) and Bar Brose (SMH Best Bar Food) that are getting regular and repeat attention.

Melbourne, of course, has been on this trajectory for years. When it comes to fun dining, Victorians have it nailed. In fact, in Sydney and Melbourne the Best New Restaurant Award went to a couple of bars. "It's true Melbourne and Sydney used to be rivals," says Durack. "But I find as the dining scene matures, they become more similar, and more complementary. It's like Los Angeles and San Francisco. If you live in one, you love going to the other. They're both brilliant, and they both have a lot to learn from each other."

Who gets the hats?

So who's doing it better? We've crunched the numbers and hat for hat, it looks like this:

The Age Good Food Guide 2017

City: 3 hats x 3; 2 hats x 14; 1 hat x 43

Regional: 3 hats x 1; 2 hats x 7; 1 hat x 20

SMH Good Food Guide 2017

City: 3 hats x 3; 2 hats x 21; 1 hat x 51

Regional: 2 hats x 5; 1 hat x 28

The Age and SMH Good Food Guide 2017 is on sale in newsagents and bookstores for $14.99 with The Age and SMH (usually $24.99), while stocks last. All book purchases receive free access to the new Good Food app.