From abalone to kingfish: Top restaurant trends across Australia

Crumpets, cabbage, jelly and unusual seafood ... our team of food writers bring you some of the top restaurant trends across the country for 2022.

Abalon, sunchoke, dill at Maxwell Restaurant in McLarenv Vale. Photo: Delicious

They say if you stick around long enough, it will come back into fashion – and it certainly rings true for the latest food trends emerging from Australia’s restaurant scene.

From the humble crumpet and retro roasted marshmallows, to gourmet steak and multi-course feasts costing up to $330 per person, here are the biggest food trends hitting plates across the country this year.

SYDNEY

FRENCH ONION DIP
One of the biggest trends at restaurants across the city is the return of the 90s party starter, the humble French onion dip. Chefs are fancifying the classic French onion dip, trading up the packet soup mix for confit onion, creme fraiche, chive oil and celery salt. At Whalebridge in the Sydney CBD the savoury whip is topped with fried shallots and served with house-baked fougasse.

RUMP CAP
With meat prices going up, chefs are looking at under-utilised cuts to deliver big flavour without the matching price tag. The new star of the steak menu is rump cap, a thin roast from the top of the sirloin coated in a creamy cap of fat that helps to keep the meat moist. Try it at Woodcut, where a Shiro Kin Full Blood 9+ wagyu rump cap comes in at half the price of a scotch fillet of the same size.

Woodcut at Crown Sydney. Delicious

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FANCY KEBABS
The late-night drunken snack has hit delicious new heights with restaurants serving up swish shish kebabs using great produce and fine-dining technique. At Aalia, a pull-apart lamb neck shawarma with tarator and pickles is made to be shared. Meanwhile over at Barangaroo, Tombik is serving up piping hot pita from the woodfire oven, stuffed with premium wagyu doner, salad and sauce.

CHOCOLATE MOUSSE
Chocolate mousse is back on the dessert menu and it looks a little different from its Pizza Hut days. The current iteration is as light and silky as ever, with Valrhona dark chocolate adding a bitter twist to the retro set dessert. Pellegrino 2000 serves up a classic chocolate mousse as good as your mum’s, or head to Continental Delicatessen, Bar & Bistro in Newtown, where you can try it trifle-style, layered with mascarpone cream, blood plum and coffee jam.

PRAWN TOAST
A classic of country Chinese restaurants everywhere. Now the deep-fried triangles along with its neon pink sweet and sour dipping sauce has made the leap from yum cha cart to restaurant table. Chefs are upgrading the tasty toasts with add-ons like yuzu aioli and prawn bisque dipping sauce. Try the hot snack at the newly opened Bob Hawke Beer and Leisure Centre in Marrickville.

JELLY
The wibbly, wobbly dessert of your childhood has had a grown-up makeover with restaurants putting fancy twists on this retro fave. Take the delicious. 100 #1 restaurant, Pellegrino 2000 in Surry Hills, where you can end your meal with limoncello – jellified limoncello served in a scooped-out lemon skin. Then there’s the fact that jelly also works as a savoury element. The Oxford Tavern serves quince jelly with its chicken liver pate and Hubert’s tuna tartare comes with a dashi jelly.

ANCHOVIES
Diners can’t get enough of these salty little fillets. Anchovies are an easy win for chefs, with some restaurants serving them still in the tin. If you’re lucky they might come with a side of hot buttered sourdough toast. La Salut in Redfern takes it to the next level with a salty cracker topped with manchego custard, tomato and a single Angelachu Cantabrian anchovy.

La Salut Anchovies. Photo: Delicious

BRISBANE

STEAK
Despite beef prices skyrocketing, steak has become a must-have inclusion on the menus of new restaurants. Whether it’s grass-fed, grain-fed, Angus or wagyu, eateries are determined to appeal to carnivores serving everything from $50 steaks with fries, salads and sauces to a pricey $300 2GR full-blood 9+ wagyu at The Lodge Bar in Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley. The love for steak has also meant a rise in grill-style restaurants, with Rothwell’s in Brisbane City, Herve’s in Brisbane’s Albion and CC’s Bar & Grill in Cairns launching with a line-up of proteins cooked with char.

REGIONAL RESTAURANTS
Particularly booming this year are Queensland’s regional areas as culinary giants from the southern states move north, chasing sunshine and diners with a growing appetite for change, while local operators venture further afield. So far it has led to a tasty onslaught of eateries from Cairns to Coolangatta, as witnessed with Rubi Red on the Gold Coast from Melbourne top chef Michael Lambie, while fellow Melburnian Jason Jones opened Bandita in Noosaville, and famous foodie family the Gallettos moved their beloved Sydney Italian institution north to Tewantin.

MORE VEG
As “meat-free-Mondays” becomes part of the vernacular and veganism continues to boom across the country, vegetable-based dishes are no longer an afterthought, but a starring attraction on menus. Brisbane’s hugely popular fire-powered restaurant Agnes makes zucchini a hero, serving it with whipped peanuts, burnt leek oil and sweet purslane, while giving equal attention to eggplant, brining it in koji, and accompanying it with macadamia and a tangle of sweet potato leaves. Also ensuring vegetarians are just as well catered to as carnivores is Greek favourite, Hellenika, just down the road at The Calile Hotel, where patrons can fill up on meat-free fare such as warm green beans with tomato, dill and parsley, spinach and rice with lemon, the classic Greek salad, baked feta in a braise of chilli and capsicum, and their signature zucchini chips. While in Newstead, diners can indulge in a complete vegetarian or vegan degustation menu at Rogue Bistro.

Rogue Bistro. Photo Delicious

COCKTAILS
Cocktails are no longer just for bars, with restaurants across the state making them a mainstay on menus. Shaking up signature drinks as well as classics, venues are experimenting with different flavour profiles to ensure there’s a drink to match every dish. Baja Modern Mexican in Fortitude Valley has become known for its cracking margaritas, while Myrtille in Crows Nest, near Toowoomba, has teamed up with a local distillery to create its own gin for use in creative concoctions. Then there’s Humble on Duke at Sunshine Beach which turns out refreshing combinations using artisan spirits from Sunshine Coast distillers.

NON-ALCOHOLIC DRINKS
Just as big as boozy cocktails are non-alcoholic options. From artisan teas at Brisbane’s contemporary Chinese restaurant Donna Chang, to tropical-inspired mocktails at Palm Cove’s Nu Nu, sommeliers are putting equal care and attention into catering for teetotallers as they are the drinking public. Degustation-only restaurants Elska and Exhibition in Brisbane are even offering complete non-alcoholic drinks pairings to go with their multi-course menus, using inspiration and ingredients from the kitchen to form sips such as beetroot kombucha and yuzu and clarified apple spritzes. The trend is only bolstered by the boom in better quality booze-free drinks, whether it be zero beers, wines or spirits.

ADELAIDE

CABBAGE
Even before it was touted as a solution to skyrocketing lettuce prices, the humble cabbage could lay claim to being this year’s star vegetable. The cabbage has long been a favourite with chefs who appreciate its versatility – even the basic green variety can be shredded raw, steamed in parcels, grilled, stir-fried et cetera. Then there are more exotic types, such as the robust savoy and the cute, pointy-headed sugarloaf, a breed that works particularly well when grilled with a brush of miso, like they do at Aurora. While it makes a wonderful side, cabbage plays the lead role in dishes such as Fugazzi’s fire-scorched cabbage with macadamia, green onion and buckwheat or at Africola, where Duncan Welgemoed grills it while brushing with prawn head butter, then finishes it with a creamy whey and cider sauce, strewn with prawn meat.
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ABALONE
The abalone grown in the waters of Kangaroo Island by aquaculture company Yumbah has become a prized acquisition for high-end restaurants. At Maxwell, Fabian Lehmann attaches delicate strips of poached abalone to the underside of a beautiful shell with a “glue” of Jerusalem artichoke, while Magill Estate includes it in a next-level seafood medley with lobster and burnt tomato. Justin James at Restaurant Botanic, however, gets the A-plus mark for its paperbark parcel of neatly dissected whole abalone with a sliver of fresh asparagus between each slice, finished with a fermented asparagus puree and abalone liver butter. Swoon.

ALOCHOHOL-FREE BEVERAGES
Influential venues are now devoting equal thought to non-alcoholic drinks as those containing booze. At Restaurant Botanic, for instance, “The Temperance” is a matched selection of juices, infusions and ferments promising the complex and adventurous combinations found in the elite wine pairings. Osteria Oggi offers a quartet of mocktails, complete with tasting notes, such as the plum sour (“winter plums/tart/foaming”) or a passionfruit gimlet made with native passion berries, juniper, fennel and pink peppercorns. And the new Africola Canteen in Norwood has brought in drinks guru Mark Reginato (Hellbound/Connect Vines/Man of Spirit) to create a constantly updated list of kombuchas, shrubs and seltzers.

CRUMPETS
Yes, there is a place for the standard supermarket crumpet, especially when its craters are overflowing with melted butter and honey. However, our best chefs have discovered that a crumpet fresh from the pan is a thing of beauty and that all those holes also work wonderfully with more savoury flavours. Top of the class is Scott Huggins whose honey-brushed crumpet loaded with smoked trout butter and fluorescent pearls of roe has become a Magill Estate signature. At Topiary, Kane Pollard gives his crumpet a dollop of fermented tomato, before topping with smoked mussels, while Shannon Fleming at Lot 100 has mini versions with tart plum and a lardo wrapping. The beef fat waffle at Maxwell also deserves a mention.
Related review: This SA restaurant’s invention for leftover sauce is worthy of a Nobel Prize

Beef fat waffle at Maxwell Restaurant. Delicious

MARSHMALLOWS
More childhood memories, this time of campfires and roasting marshmallows. Star of Greece adds delicious house-made grilled marshmallows to a dessert of poached rhubarb, choc-coconut soil, caramelised ice-cream and raspberry floss. But arkhé takes the biscuit, so to speak, with its take on the American campfire treat “s’more”, here a combination of dark malted rye biccy, smoked chocolate and rhubarb marshmallow.

MURRAY COD
An impressive alternative to the usual salmon/barramundi/snapper/whiting choices, this white-fleshed fish is farmed in the Riverland (as well as interstate) and completely sustainable. Eleni’s, the Greek restaurant at Renmark winery Mallee Estate, celebrates its regional hero ingredients with perfectly cooked Murray cod fillets napped with a butter sauce containing plenty of local capers. At CBD diner eleven, Callum Hann’s kitchen team matches the fish with poached mussels, pearl barley and an intriguing yellow bean sauce, while The Lane’s Tom Robinson favours a classic chardonnay beurre blanc piqued with caviar.

ROAST CHICKEN
Troubled times call for comfort food and meals don’t come more soothing than the nostalgia of a roast chicken dinner. Our favourite, complete with bread sauce and a terrific chicken gravy mum would be proud of, is found at the Scenic Hotel. Elsewhere, Extra Chicken Salt has created a whole restaurant around the rotisserie chook (complete with potato and gravy), while Brendan Wessels at Aurora has used it as inspiration for an intensely flavoured roast chicken cream, scorched onion and salt-baked potato.

KINGFISH
Plates of raw kingfish sashimi/crudo/ceviche continue to demand a place on the starter lists of so many restaurants it is almost a (pleasant) surprise not to see it. That said, the best versions (Georges on Waymouth, Fino at Seppeltsfield and Press for example) are still delightful. Far more interesting, however, is the creative uses that chefs are finding for less familiar parts of the fish, particularly the collar and wing, where an abundance of pearly white flesh is hidden among the structure of bone and cartilage. arkhé’s fire-roasted collar in a sticky savoury varnish is superb, as are the salt and pepper wings that Tony Carroll partners with a soy and tamarind broth at Fishbank. Other places to find excellent wings include Peel St and Kosho Japanese in North Adelaide.

Fishbank. Photo: Delicious

PORK CUTLET
The soaring price of beef and lamb may well be a factor but the big-ticket meat item on many menus is changing to a pork cutlet or chop. The best versions are likely to be taken from a free-range, heritage breed pig, often aged and/or brined, grilled over a flame, and accompanied by something with a little sharpness. Clare Valley bistro Seed has one of the best, perhaps served with apple, quince and a reduction sauce bolstered with marinated prunes. Tom Tilbury at Press has a more subtle match of eggplant and mustard seeds, while arkhé’s Jake Kellie favours plum and pickled currants.

BOOKINGS
Covid restrictions forced most restaurants into making significant changes to the way they do business. The prime dinner booking of 7pm is becoming a thing of the past, replaced by a choice of 6pm (or even 5.30pm) and 8pm as venues look to fit in two sittings. The financial impact of late cancellations and no-shows also means that many establishments are now asking for a deposit or charging cancellation fees. Shobosho, for example, charges $35 per person for cancellations less than one day in advance. It isn’t likely to be long before some others join Restaurant Botanic in asking for full upfront payment, like a ticket to the footy or theatre.
Related story: Should restaurants still charge a $100 per person cancellation fee?