Catalina wins The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2016 People's Choice award
The votes have been tallied, and the state has spoken. Catalina has been voted NSW's favourite restaurant.
More than 20,000 people voted in The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide People's Choice award, which took in the best of metro and regional dining across NSW and the ACT. There was some incredible diversity across the top 10, including ACT newcomers AKIBA, Terrey Hills pizza favourite Cavallino and picturesque Jonah's at Whale Beach.
Catalina's owners Judy and Michael McMahon are having a great 2015, having taken home the Australian Financial Review's Top 100 Restaurant's People's Choice award earlier this year. "To win the Good Food vote, with such a huge voting pool... I'm still pinching myself," says Judy.
The pair have owned and run Catalina since 1994, and credit a culture of loyal diners for the big win. "We recognise our customers when they return. We welcome them. We've got a vast regular clientele, and a lot of them are locals. Once we know people we'll try and make sure that we'll always try and get them a table. We're never booked out for a good regular."
Those regulars now span two generations of diners. "We just love what we do," says Judy. "We've known our customers for years and we welcome new ones. And now we're also getting the grown-up children of the customers from when we first opened."
It's this solid assuredness within the Sydney dining scene that saw Michael McMahon win the Good Food Guide's Vittoria Legend Award back in 2011. "It really is an extraordinary thing to win," says Michael. "To get recognition from Herald readers and our diners is astounding. You don't have two happier human beings on earth than Judy and I at the moment."
Judy agrees. "It vindicates what we know, really, about how people feel about us. Just to know our customers can actually be bothered to vote is wonderful. We know that people love what we do – we kind of feel that all the time. But this tells us that what we've done our whole lives has been right."
The top 10, as voted by diners:
1. Catalina, Rose Bay
2. Akiba, Canberra
3. Cavallino Ristorante, Terrey Hills
4. Harvest. Newrybar
5. Manfredi At Bells, Killcare
6. Efendy, Balmain
7. Jonah's, Whale Beach
8. The Apollo, Potts Point
9. The Stunned Mullet, Port Macquarie
10. Graze Restaurant, Willow Tree
Congratulations to Graham Lee, the winner of our prize for voting in the People's Choice awards. Graham has won a $250 Good Food Gift Card every month for a year and two tickets to The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide awards on September 7.
The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2016 will be available from participating newsagents, 7-Elevens and supermarkets for $10 with the newspaper on Saturday, September 12, while stocks last.
Myffy Rigby is the former editor of the Good Food Guide.