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Hot new food and drink trends: The best things to look forward to in 2023

Callan Boys
Callan Boys

Double happiness: Laksa meets wontons at Ho Jiak in Sydney.
Double happiness: Laksa meets wontons at Ho Jiak in Sydney.Jennifer Soo

It's easier to predict the weather in two months' time than food trends a year down the track. A butterfly flaps its wings in Tokyo and there's a thunderstorm in New York. A Finnish TikToker bakes pasta with feta cheese, and there's a penne shortage at my local Coles.

In 2019 I wrote that "peganism" – a meeting of paleo and plant-based dieting – was set to take off. Eh, that didn't happen. In 2016 Good Food forecast that camel milk would become the new coconut water. Nope, sorry, try again. Although, we did correctly predict that baking your own bread would have a resurgence three years ago. We just didn't know a global pandemic would be the catalyst.

So, out of fear of looking like a numpty when crepes* haven't infiltrated every menu by December, this isn't another finger-in-the-air restaurant trends story. It's purely what I'm looking forward to in food and drink over the next 12 months. These days, that's about all I can be certain of.

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Semillon, snacks and soju

Welcome to the year of the wine bar. "But wine bars have been around for years, how is this a new thing?" I hear you say. And you'd be right. Bars built around compelling (and often natural) wine by the glass have been opening like steamed clams over the past two decades.

But we're about to see a lot more of them. The wine bar has nailed how we want to eat in 2023 – a couple of (relatively) affordable snacks, maybe something more substantial to share, maybe some more snacks. Anyone for rum baba? Customisation is king and fewer diners want to be strong-armed into a tasting menu, or hefty entrees and mains.

The Age restaurant critic Besha Rodell says the trend is partly driven by more chefs opening venues they would want to visit themselves. "If you're a hospitality worker, for the most part you don't want to go to a fine-dining restaurant on your day off. You want somewhere you can swing by that's more casual."

Surry Hills' hot new wine bar, Bar Copains.
Surry Hills' hot new wine bar, Bar Copains.Edwina Pickles
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There's a financial appeal too, with some economically-driven operators seeing the wine bar as a community hub that can attract repeat, regular customers rather than a destination restaurant for special occasions. "A wine bar is a place you can go once or twice a week," says Rodell. "If it's a good wine bar, fulfilling its purpose … then it can just be the wine-based version of a pub.

"The wine industry in Australia has also changed so much over the past 10 years. Importers are bringing in so much interesting stuff, in addition to our own great wines. There's a lot more to build a wine bar around."

Melbourne readers can check out Richmond's Clover and Cremorne's Lilac Wine (opening this Friday) as new examples of the form.

In Sydney, Surry Hills' Bar Copains is the hottest bar a vin to recently launch, and Lil Sis at Chippendale's refreshed Abercrombie hotel is bringing in the late-night crowd with mussels escabeche and skin-contact semillon.

Next up in Sydney is Beau, the long-awaited wine bar from Nomad. It's set to open imminently in Surry Hills with a focus on Australian wines, seafood and manoush.

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Additionally, the Nomad team is preparing to open a restaurant (Reine) and a bar (La Rue) as part of the Queen and Collins development inside Melbourne's original gold rush-era stock exchange.

Kingfish crudo (
Kingfish crudo (Edwina Pickles

I'm also jonesing for more bar owners to match the livewire flavours of natural wine with the pulsing ferments of Korean food. Sitting at a counter surrounded by spicy tteokbokki rice cakes and juicy grenache? Heaven. A good thing, then, that Korean looks set to continue its Sydney and Melbourne domination.

Case in point, my local pub began serving salt-and-pepper squid with "gochujang aioli" this summer. Korean ingredients are hitting Western menus like Japanese food in the 2000s. Remember when "wasabi mayo" was the most thrilling thing since truffle oil?

I'm hoping this encourages more punters to check out the brilliant bulgogi and hot-pot spots in the suburbs, or any of the newly hatted venues helmed by rising Korean talent such as James in South Melbourne and Soul Dining, Surry Hills.

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At the new Moon Mart in Melbourne, chef Eun Hee An serves a chilled summer soup with white kimchi liquid and somen noodles that was a favourite of her childhood in Korea; at Osteria di Russo & Russo in Enmore, Sydney, young chef Jowoon Oh is now infusing Italian dishes with Korean techniques and ferments to brilliant effect. Oh also co-founded the grassroots Kimchi Club last year to hold pop-up events and support up-and-coming Korean chefs.

More young chefs drawing on their own cultural background like this to create something new and delicious is what I'm most excited to see more of in 2023. Chefs such as Junda Khoo in Sydney, who pays homage to his grandmother's Malaysian cooking at Ho Jiak, and Jeow owner Thi Le in Richmond, who has created a neighbourhood restaurant inspired by the Laotian eateries of Melbourne's suburbs. Europe's reputation as the alpha and omega of the food world is fading. On that subject …

Chef Rene Redzepi in Kyoto, where his restaurant team is currently preparing
Chef Rene Redzepi in Kyoto, where his restaurant team is currently preparing Amy Tang

The Noma effect

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Earlier this month, chef Rene Redzepi announced his Copenhagen fine-diner Noma would be closing, due to financial reasons, at the end of 2024 (talk about advance notice). Every breathy description you can think of has been used by food media regarding the fermentation-loving "world's best restaurant" over the past two decades. "Trailblazing". "Genius". "Revolutionary". "Extraordinary".

But since the closure announcement, some different descriptions have appeared in editorials: "exploitative", "abusive" and "unethical". The "financial reasons" are essentially that Noma can no longer afford to pay its staff a fair wage, but, quite notably, the restaurant only began to pay interns for the first time three months ago.

American chef Rob Anderson summed it up in The Atlantic. "A business that builds wealth and renown without paying anything, much less a living wage, to nearly half its workers is not worth celebrating, no matter how exceptional the output."

What does this mean for restaurants in Australia? Increased pressure, ideally, on operators to ensure hospitality staff are being paid a fair wage for fair hours worked. Anecdotally, I've heard that Australian hospitality conditions and pay have improved significantly over the past few years, but there's still a way to go.

Photo: COLIN PAGE
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Noma's forthcoming closure could also herald a shift away from tweezered tasting menus that are often more cerebral than satisfying. Dinners starting at $300 a head are far from dead – we still love to put ourselves in the hands of a Quay or Brae (pictured) on special occasions – but these are rare examples of high-flying restaurants that stick the landing and without leaving me feeling like I've just been fleeced for the price of a new dishwasher.

With the costs of living and produce still rising with high inflation, I expect there is little room left at the top for restaurants to deliver super luxe dining. (The wave of omakase restaurants is an exception, largely because it's easier to fill a 12-person counter than a 40-seat dining room.) As such, I'm looking forward to more new restaurants – in Australia and internationally – focused on real-deal hospitality, rather than chefs serving moss juice to the ultra rich and muttering something about how eating ants will fix the global food system.

Chef Tobin Kent (pictured) serves 12 diners at a time at Moonah in Connewarre, Victoria.
Chef Tobin Kent (pictured) serves 12 diners at a time at Moonah in Connewarre, Victoria.Marnie Hawson

Worth filling the tank for

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Photo: Jonathan van der Knaap

In saying all that, I'm also itching to eat at Restaurant Botanic this year. COVID has twice wrecked my plans to experience Justin James' cooking since the US-born chef took over the rotunda restaurant in the centre of Adelaide Botanic Gardens. James (pictured, right) uses rare and native plants grown onsite to create a four-hour-long tasting menu that might include kangaroo with camel hump (yes) lardo, Geraldton wax and fermented rhubarb.⁠

A Tassie trip is long overdue too, primarily to eat cosy pub food cooked by former MoVida chef Zac Green at The Waterloo in Swansea. Hunkered into an oceanside hotel on the Freycinet coast, The Waterloo works closely with farmers and fishers to serve straight-up deliciousness such as roast duck with cognac-spiked prunes, whole flounder, and wallaby shanks (but really, it had me at "devilled kidneys on toast"). A visit to Marion Bay is also essential, where chef Timothy Hardy serves up to 14 courses cooked over fire at Van Bone.⁠

Photo: Mark Fergus

Back on the mainland, lunch at Chae in Cockatoo (that's 50 kilometres south-east of the Melbourne CBD for our Sydney readers) is a top priority. It's an intimate glimpse through the gum trees into Korean culinary culture, founded by chef Jung Eun Chae (pictured).

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Meanwhile, just over an hour south-west of the city, there's Moonah in Connewarre. Here, chef Tobin Kent serves 12 people at a time, often showcasing produce he either grows, dives for, or forages himself.

Destination dining in NSW is still all about the Northern Rivers. Sustainability-minded chef Matt Stone now runs the kitchens of You Beauty and Ciao, Mate! in Bangalow. Ciao is a must for left-field and traditional pizzas, while You Beauty takes its design cues from dinky-di pubs, but with a hyper-seasonal menu that might feature charred asparagus with sugar-snap peas and salted egg-yolk sauce. New Byron Bay wine bar Heather is also on the hit list. There are potato chips with comte. There are rare wines galore.

Cin-cin, cheers, salut

OK, I'm going to allow myself one ridiculous prediction, so here it goes – drum roll, please – jelly shots. But, you know, like, fancy jelly shots – with Campari and stuff. They were a big trend in New York last year, and Sydney's Pellegrino 2000 has a "limongello" on the dessert menu that pretty much everyone orders. So, yep. I'm calling it. Jelly shots. And you know what else is coming back? The Long Island Iced Tea. Only this time made with local rum, gin and vodka, and topped up with artisan cola. It's time to party like it's 1992.

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I'm also looking forward to more non-alcoholic booze replacements doing their own thing. I receive more media releases spruiking a new booze-free beer each week than emails about how Vegemite is now in a pizza/chip/biscuit/juice/pie/chocolate. Enough. But at least some of the teetotalling beers are drinkable. It's much harder to like any of the alcohol-free "spirits" and wine out there. Thankfully, brands such as Mornington Peninsula's Etch Sparkling and Brunswick's Monceau are creating sparkling kombuchas and soft drinks with enough complexity to take the place of wine at the table without trying to fake the taste.

Monceau co-owners Rowan McNaught and Alan Caras.
Monceau co-owners Rowan McNaught and Alan Caras.Justin McManus

As for real deal wine, bring on the alternative grapes. Chardonnay is all well and good, but I'm just as excited to drink Australian fiano, zibibbo and greco as winemakers experiment with grapes to suit a country getting warmer by the year.

"Some of the most exciting wines on shelves at the moment are Australian-grown alternative varieties," says Good Food drinks writer Katie Spain. "Many are vernacular tongue twisters but they're exciting on all fronts – mystique, aroma, flavour, and climate appropriateness in the vineyard and the glass.

"The top wine at last year's Australian Alternative Varieties Wine Show was the 2021 Purple Hands Wines After Five Wine Co Aglianico out of the Barossa Valley. On the red front, sangiovese, montepulciano, barbera and tempranillo received a smattering of gold medals.

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"For whites, seek out Rhone variety marsanne, the head-snapping Italian variety vermentino, and exciting newcomers friulano and assyrtiko."

Photo: Steven Woodburn

Coming soon

More than any other new eatery, I'm keen to visit Birds of Paradise Rotisserie in Brunswick Heads. The fine folk from Fleet slinging charcoal chooks and salads to takeaway and eat by the river? That's what life and holidays are all about. It opens very soon-ish, and there will be another reason to visit the Northern Rivers when the Fleet mothership relaunches later in the year.

In Victoria, all the immediate attention will be on Totti's when the Italian-inspired eatery opens at the Lorne Hotel in March. It's Merivale hospitality group's first big launch outside NSW, and with chef Matt Germanchis (formerly of Anglesea's Captain Moonlite) in charge, we're expecting plenty of top-tier seafood (pictured, above). Also happening soon: MoVida Geelong. Frank Camorra will open Melbourne's favourite Spanish restaurant on Geelong's favourite eat street, Little Malop.

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For Sydneysiders, the Swillhouse team (Restaurant Hubert, The Baxter Inn) has turned a corner with its transformation of the former Phillip's Foote pub in The Rocks. After almost a year of renovation delays, Le Foote is finally set to open in the coming month or so. We know it will be a Mediterranean-ish grill, bloody huge and white hot.

More grilling will go down in the Sydney CBD when the crew behind Pellegrino 2000 and Potts Point's Bistrot 916 cut the ribbon at Clam Bar on Bridge Street, likely some time in February. It's expected that Clam Bar will put a new spin on the New York-style steakhouse, which the tired format absolutely needs. And the Bentley Group is set to launch Brasserie 1930 (also on Bridge Street) in March.

Koshihikari risotto with XO sauce and spot prawn crudo at Icebergs (
Koshihikari risotto with XO sauce and spot prawn crudo at Icebergs (Jennifer Soo

*Just quietly, though, crepes are coming back in a big way. See also, oeuf mayonnaise, vodka martinis, Nigerian soups, Filipino desserts, pain perdu, raw prawns, roast cockerel, koshihikari rice in dishes that aren't sushi, The Menu 2: Redzepi's Revenge, vitello tonnato, vada pav, periwinkles, Suze (white negronis, hello), avocado oil, tinned fish as a main course and Clamato​ juice. Also, please don't hold me to any of this.

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Callan BoysCallan Boys is editor of SMH Good Food Guide, restaurant critic for Good Weekend and Good Food writer.

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