The World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards were wrong to ignore Australia – these five should’ve made the cut

Australia has experienced its worst outcome in the World’s 50 Best Restaurants awards at a time industry experts say our food is better than it has ever been.

What the heck do the judges of the list – announced overnight at a ceremony in Valencia, Spain – have against our fine diners? There was not a single Australian venue in the longlist of 100 restaurants featured in the British-run awards.

Haven’t they been to Quay and marvelled at Sydney Harbour while eating sea cucumber crackling and caviar? What makes Bangkok’s Gaggan Anand, prone to writing its menu with emojis, so much better than a high-rise seat for macadamia and smoked eel tofu at Melbourne’s Vue de Monde?

Chief restaurant critic for The Age, Besha Rodell, agrees.

“Australian food is better than it has ever been right now,” she says. “I’ve eaten at a significant percentage of places on that Top 50 list and there’s no way that there are not restaurants in Australia and New Zealand that are equal to or better than many of those.

“It’s just really disappointing to see a lack of representation at a time when our food is so strong − it feels like going backwards.”

Australia’s best representation was Perth-born chef Dave Pynt, whose Singapore barbecue institution Burnt Ends placed 65th on the longlist of venues awarded positions 51-100. Glitzy Melbourne restaurant Gimlet, which came in at 84th last year, didn’t muster a mention. Peruvian restaurant Central, in Lima, is your new “best restaurant in the world”.

Spain, meanwhile, notched up a whopping 10 restaurants on the list, including three in the top five. Regarding Barcelona’s Disfrutar (named the world’s second-best restaurant), a fellow Good Food Guide reviewer texted me this morning: “I was there last year … it was all foams and gels without a shred of freshness! There are so many old-school places on that list doing fussed-up, silly food.”

The awards are determined by a voting academy of more than 1000 international “restaurant experts”. To be fair to the judges, I doubt any of them have a grudge against our sunburnt country. How could they? We have finger limes, quokkas and Sarah Snook. Rather, I suspect, it’s the tyranny of distance.

The academy is composed of equal parts food writers; chefs and restaurateurs; and “well-travelled gourmets” (read: foodies with Qantas Platinum rights). The panel is split into 27 regions across the globe, including the UK and Ireland; France; Spain and Portugal; China and Korea; Japan; and – hello from Down Under! – Oceania, Australia and New Zealand.

According to the World’s 50 Best website, each academy member voted for between six and 10 restaurants in 2023, depending on their ability to travel internationally. They must have eaten in the restaurant in the past 18 months (it could be a PR-funded free ride or paid for independently), and no more than six restaurants can be located in the voter’s home region.

And there it is: Europe has a huge head start. Spanish members are more likely to visit neighbouring France than fly to Australia. UK voters are more likely to spend a long weekend in Barcelona because it’s a hell of a lot cheaper than two weeks in the antipodes. (And who doesn’t want to drink vermouth on a beach in San Sebastian?)

Give me a great flathead and chips over a blue gel that looks like toothpaste any day of the week.

The United States also has a massive advantage because it’s split into three regions: East, Mid and West. Small wonder that New York has four restaurants on the list – every second Californian gourmet is probably swinging into Manhattan’s high temple of fish-focused French, Le Bernardin, when they’re in town.

For what it’s worth, I was at Le Bernardin in August, and I can name at least a dozen more delicious – and relevant – restaurants in Sydney and Melbourne that you can probably get a table at tonight.

Sydney chef Josh Niland, especially, should have a place on the list for his progressive Paddington fish restaurant Saint Peter. In 2020, Niland became the first Australian to win the James Beard Book of the Year award, arguably North America’s most coveted culinary prize, for The Whole Fish Cookbook. Le Bernardin has some nice sauces and wine, and fake flowers in the bathroom.

So. How do we get more restaurants on the list? That’s a tough one. Tourism Australia spent millions to bring the ceremony to Melbourne in 2017, nabbing the attention of the world’s food media and academy members in the process. The theory was that visiting judges would be wowed by our restaurants and vote accordingly. Australia’s representation would skyrocket the following year.

That didn’t happen. Although Melbourne’s Attica placed 20th, 2018 was Australia’s poorest representation on the list since the awards began as a feature in British trade magazine Restaurant in 2002. We’ve only gone down the ranks since.

Maybe it’s time for another government campaign to “invite the world to dinner”. Maybe the recent influx of visiting chefs and celebrity cooks gushing about our restaurants will have an effect. (Nigella Lawson is very keen on Ester and Icebergs in Sydney).

Or maybe we should just view the list as what it is – a cleverly branded popularity contest that exists in a bubble only relevant to a small percentage of the population who can afford to spend $400 on a tasting menu.

How many emulsions and novel-sized wine lists does the world need? Give me a great flathead and chips over a blue gel that looks like toothpaste any day of the week.

Five Australian restaurants that deserve a place on The World’s 50 Best list

Restaurant Botanic, Adelaide

American-born chef Justin James took control of Adelaide Botanic Garden’s restaurant in 2021, lured by access to more than 400 unique herbs, shrubs and trees grown onsite. Diners can expect about two-dozen stimulating creations and a wholly unique experience. You don’t eat cured camel hump in a heritage tearoom every day.

Quay, The Rocks

The Sydney Harbour-fronting fine diner has been awarded three Good Food Guide hats for 21 consecutive years. It was 26th on the list in 2011, and while the knock-out Opera House view remains the same, Peter Gilmore’s cooking keeps getting better and better.

Saint Peter, Paddington

After six years of gill-to-fin cooking and spruiking the delicious complexity of dry-aged fish, Josh Niland is at the top of his game. Saint Peter’s handsome marble-on-sandstone dining room is often the first stop for chefs visiting Sydney, and many will take Niland’s innovative ideas back to New York, Copenhagen and London.

Vue de Monde, Melbourne

Few restaurants come as close to the complete package as Vue, high in the sky at Rialto Towers. There are extravagant views, exemplary staff, a degustation brimming with luxury ingredients, and a stonking wine cellar with benchmark swagger.

Brae, Birregurra

Australia’s ultimate destination restaurant, about a two-hour drive south-west of Melbourne. It’s a stylish ode to sustainability, harnessing the best seasonal produce – mostly grown on-site – and remixing it through the mind of owner-chef Dan Hunter.