For the past few months, the Good Food team has been wrestling with an important question: if a venue is known to allow criminal offences, particularly of a violent or sexual nature, should we include it in the Good Food Guide? The answer is no, and I’d like to explain why.

Our position means six high-profile Sydney restaurants and bars run by the influential Swillhouse group have excluded themselves from The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide 2025. Those venues are Le Foote in The Rocks, Restaurant Hubert, Alberto’s Lounge, Baxter Inn and Caterpillar Club in the CBD, and Darlinghurst’s Shady Pines Saloon.

There are also ongoing investigations we’re pursuing that may ultimately affect other venues in NSW and Victoria in the future.

The Swillhouse group allegedly pushed female staff out after the women reported sexual assaults, encouraged staff to have sex with customers and take drugs while on shift, and discriminated against women.

Two people, Rachelle “Rocky” Hair and Jenna Hemsworth, have since gone public with their claims that they were sexually assaulted while working at Swillhouse and have accused the company of failing its employees.

The explosive, and at times shocking, allegations, revealed by a months-long investigation by The Sydney Morning Herald and Good Food, have ricocheted across the national hospitality scene.

They have also reverberated through the Good Food office – a publication that has the fortunate task of writing about one of life’s great pleasures, dining out. But these stories expose a darker, more sinister side to hospitality that if we discover proof of, we can’t ignore.

For the past 40 years, the SMH and Age Good Food Guides have published annual collections of restaurant, bar and cafe reviews across various price points, cuisines, styles and suburbs.

The inclusion of venues in the Guides has always been at the editors’ discretion and, while people might have differing ideas about what constitutes great food and service, I think we can all agree that sexual assault is not acceptable behaviour in the workplace. That’s why we can’t, in good conscience, recommend Swillhouse venues that are known to allow or perpetrate abuse, especially when it rises to the level of criminal abuse.

This position represents the biggest evolution to the Good Food Guide’s approach to reviews in its four-decade history, and widens the criteria we may use to decide which restaurants, bars and cafes we recommend. The Good Food Guide is still about where our editors recommend you eat, but in 2024 we also believe diners care about ethics.

Investigating hospitality workplaces is far from easy. We can’t rely on rumour or gut feeling, or exclude venues and people for behaviours we find objectionable. It requires the highest standards of reporting.

The Swillhouse investigation by Eryk Bagshaw and Bianca Hrovat took months, involved extensive interviews and email correspondence, consultation by senior editors and guidance by Nine’s legal team. It was comprehensive and thorough, and would never have happened if the brave victims weren’t willing to trust us.

But the Swillhouse case isn’t isolated – the hospitality industry has a systemic sexual harassment and gender-based violence problem. That’s why, at November’s Good Food Guide awards in Sydney and Melbourne, we will introduce a new award to shine a light on initiatives and programs that hospitality businesses have introduced to foster a positive, safe and empowering workplace culture.

The Cultural Change Champion award allows Good Food to highlight the Victorian and NSW business operators trying to transform the industry. For every bad venue, there are great ones that show leadership and respect, and we want to celebrate them. People shouldn’t feel unsafe at work, and for this to be true for the Australian hospitality industry, it requires people willing to blow up industry norms.

‘We can’t, in good conscience, recommend Swillhouse venues that are known to allow or perpetrate abuse.’

The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide turns 40 this year – a milestone only surpassed by The Age Good Food Guide turning 44. If we’re in the business of recommending places that encapsulate what it means to eat and drink in a city, overlooking the wellbeing of the people working for these venues is wrong.

There’s no doubt Swillhouse has transformed Sydney hospitality. It arrived on the scene in 2010 and set benchmarks around service, drinks and food, and transported us to fabulous and stylish worlds that became the backdrop to thousands of life moments and celebrations. (Personally, I can’t remember a birthday that didn’t end with drinks at Shady Pines Saloon.) We now know it’s been at the expense of some of its staff. It’s also not lost on us that Swillhouse not being in this year’s Guide affects its 330 employees, and that saddens us.

But just as Australia’s restaurant, bar and cafe scenes have evolved over four decades, the Guides need to roll with the times. If we’re seeking leaders in the industry trying to shake things up, it’s only right for the Guides to also be a cultural change champion.