4 hours ago
3
Covering Restaurant of the Year, Service Excellence and Chef of the Year, these 15 names are ones to put on your dining cheat sheet for the year ahead.
What do you need to stand out from the dining pack in 2026? The finalists for The Age Good Food Guide’s three big-ticket awards – celebrating chefs, service stars and defining restaurants – prove that excellence comes in all shapes and sizes.
Whether it’s opening a more casual offshoot for your restaurant’s younger fans, continuing to lead the pack after 10 or even 50 years of service, or using Victorian fruit to make Italian-style liqueurs poured at your restaurant’s upstairs bar, these 15 individuals and venues have turned heads this year.
They’re vastly different, but all should be on your dining to-do list for the next 12 months.
The winners of all three awards will be announced at the Good Food Guide Awards on Monday, October 27. Follow the Age’s live blog of the event from 3pm for all the action.
Oceania Cruises Service Excellence
Executes the highest standard of hospitality relevant to their establishment, from attitude and skill to knowledge and personality.
Oska and Dani Whitehart, Bar Bellamy
The Carlton wine bar that could, Bar Bellamy hums with the easy hospitality of a team that loves what they do. That’s thanks in no small part to owner-operators Oska and Dani Whitehart, who balance drinks wizardry with generous service. That winning combo continues next door at their brand-new sister venue, the more affordable Melitta.
Alex Casey, Brae
Stepping out of the winter chill and into three-hatted Brae is a warm enough transition. But when you’re greeted with kind eyes and an invitation to “draw warmth from the fire”, you feel positively swaddled. That’s just Alex Casey. His ease while providing synchronised, extremely intentional table service permeates the whole dining experience at Birregurra’s Brae, an example of hospitality at its finest.
Rebecca Baker, Reed House
There’s warm service and then there’s what you feel at Reed House in Melbourne’s CBD, run by Rebecca Baker with her partner, chef Mark Hannell. Leaning into the bluestone cottage setting, Baker and her team make you feel like you’re stepping into their home every time you cross the threshold. Half-serves are no trouble, splashes of wine are happily poured for you to try, and there are no silly questions, ever.
Shane Lazzo, Gimlet
Handling the steady stream of people walking into Gimlet – still, remarkably, one of the city’s most in-demand restaurants – requires the logistical skill of an air traffic controller and the poise of a dancer. Shane Lazzo, an industry veteran, has both. Whether he’s found a spot at the bar for you or is bearing bad news, Lazzo does it with aplomb. That Gimlet’s whole team of waitstaff is on-song is more proof of his powers.
Erica Miller, Grace Bar & Eatery
Hard work and hospitality go hand in hand, but Erica Miller and her partner Matthieu are on another level. You’ll see her at the coffee window they operate out of their Rutherglen restaurant on weekend mornings, and she’ll also be in the bistro that night, pouring wines from a list populated mostly by small Victorian producers, chatting easily with tables, going the extra mile. And the pair also has three children at home.
T2 Tea Restaurant of the Year
A restaurant setting benchmarks for food and service, pushing the hospitality industry forward and supporting Australian producers.
Embla
In 2015, Dave Verheul and Christian McCabe sold Melbourne a dream it’s yet to wake from. Back then, Verheul jokingly described Embla’s food as “rustic, modern, wood-fired chic”. But truer words may never have been spoken, and after a decade of chicken skin crisps topped with whipped anchovy, you could confidently add “Melbourne’s most crucial wine bar” to the pitch. The sweets rule too: even the staunchest dessert detractors wilt before the salted brown sugar tart with fennel and mandarin.
Chauncy
Take easygoing Australian hospitality, a European farmhouse sensibility and an engaging young couple: the result is one of Victoria’s most beloved regional restaurants among those in the know. Long lunches have become even more enjoyably languorous with a new all-inclusive set menu starring Central Victorian produce, all of it paired with wonderful wine chosen for you by the Guide’s most recent sommelier of the year, Tess Murray.
Flower Drum
It’s the captain of Chinatown, the final boss of Cantonese dining. Owner Jason Lui marshalls a fleet of career waitstaff, dispatching them across the hallowed carpet. University was free and Gough Whitlam the prime minister when the Drum carved its first duck. But at the ripe age of 50, which is surely 400 in restaurant years, this is still a dining landmark with many fans of its luxury Australian seafood dishes.
Tedesca Osteria
Anyone who’s touched this hand-carved oak door knows the peerless hospitality that lies within. At its heart is a hearth; at its helm, Brigitte Hafner. The menu walks with the seasons and might feature a platter of hot-smoked duck with sweet-sour cherries. The hills roll by in the foreground, but the wine list is just as attractive, thanks to the nous of Hafner’s business partner, James Broadway.
Greasy Zoes
It’s a tiny restaurant but it’s charged with big ideas. Drinks and produce come from small, sustainable suppliers, while couple Zoe Birch and Lachlan Gardner run their eight-seat restaurant with zero staff: Gardner managing the floor, Birch the kitchen. A bite-sized savoury tart is made with native grass flour. Koji-crusted mushrooms are like itty-bitty schnitties. By the time you’re sliding a spoon into parsnip ice-cream, Birch has shaped tomorrow’s sourdough and scoured the kitchen.
Oceania Cruises Chef of the Year
A chef at the forefront of dining, setting new standards, leading by example and contributing positively to their broader community.
Simone Watts, Barragunda Dining
There’s much to like about the mission of this new farm-side, profit-for-purpose restaurant on the Mornington Peninsula. But when you’re seated in the light-filled dining room, your most immediate concern is how chef Simone Watts magicked so much flavour out of sunflower stalks to make a cream served with fried Portarlington mussels. Or how she came up with the inspired combination of estate-grown beetroot with figs, juniper and hazelnut. Watts endeavours to cook with a small footprint, but delivers wonderful generosity.
Thi Le, Anchovy
Thi Le’s hatted Richmond restaurant has had many lives in 10 years, as the chef has mined the depths of Vietnamese cuisine. Right now, you might eat whitebait tossed with the mountain pepper mac khen, or a ring of choux pastry boosted by toasted rice sorbet. In a quest for an all-local, artisan-driven menu, Le makes her own fish sauce and rice wine. And this year, she published a bold book of recipes and stories on living between two cultures, an important moment for millions of Australians with the same experience.
Lorcan Kan, Etta
Look us in the eye and tell us you don’t want to eat this man’s dessert of chilli oil parfait. Succeeding a high-profile chef is no mean feat, but the Lorcan Kan era at restaurateur Hannah Green’s date-night favourite Etta in Brunswick East has been one for the books. Dishes range from crisp-skinned duck leg with white coconut curry and aloe vera to wagyu hanger steak with rendang butter. You can’t make this stuff up – unless you’re Lorcan Kan, in which case, you make it look all too easy.
Nagesh Seethiah, Manze
In the past few years, Melbourne has gone from no Mauritian wine bars to two on the same North Melbourne street, each rich with intrigue, and it’s largely due to this chef. At Manze, masala butter pipis are just one hit on a dazzling set menu celebrating the flavours of the Indian Ocean. Across the road at newcomer Boire, punters gnaw on charred goat ribs with a green almond martini in hand.
Michael Ryan, Provenance
Deep in the High Country, a craftsman plies his trade in a former bank. He is an alchemist in every sense: a fine-dining chef, an apothecary, a budding nose. For nearly two decades, Michael Ryan’s Beechworth restaurant Provenance – run with wife Jeanette Henderson – has set the fine-dining agenda for the north-eastern reaches of the state. Now, with its companion bar pouring his Beechworth Bitters line of drinks, it’s never been a more enticing destination.
The winners of The Age Good Food Guide 2026 Awards will be announced on Monday, October 27, presented by Oceania Cruises and T2 Tea.
The awards ceremony will be live-blogged via The Age from 3pm, and the 2026 edition of the Guide will be available on the Good Food app from 8pm. A free 80-page Good Food Guide liftout will be inserted in The Age on Tuesday, October 28.
The home of the Good Food Guide, the app is free for premium subscribers of The Age and also available as a standalone subscription. You can download the Good Food app here.
Restaurant reviews, news and the hottest openings served to your inbox.
