In editing this year’s Good Food Guide, we sunk our spoons into a small island’s worth of creme caramels and ate too many frites to count (or tell our doctors about). Big steaks were shared. Anchovy toast was had. We ate things on skewers and from hollowed-out bones. Offal stole our hearts, eel went from under-the-radar to the best thing since sliced kingfish, and celeriac and kohlrabi were transformed from bit-part to scene-stealing on multiple occasions.

Reviewing for the Guide gives you a whole new vocabulary: you become fluent in pastry preparations, chilli varieties, tiramisu riffs and the universe of som tum. You also start to spot trends from a mile off – and tire of them about 4.5 times quicker than the average diner.

With all that in mind, consider this a highly subjective snapshot of two professional eaters’ loves and hates of the past 12 months.

Things we loved

Crazy caramels

Move over butterscotch. This year we saw that there are many shades of caramel, from seaweed-infused to amaro-spiked. North & Common’s sesame version is nutty, sticky and a perfect plus-one for chocolate mousse. Cap off an extravagant night at Society with a caviar and creme fraiche sundae, complete with funky kelp caramel. And fish sauce caramel crowns pâté with chips at Odd Culture in Fitzroy, completes barramundi wings at Castlemaine’s Wild, and sharpens creme caramel at Mornington newcomer Colt Dining.

Surf and turf, but make it pork and seafood

Once relegated to jumbo prawns and a big hunk of beef at old-school steakhouses, surf and turf has been born again and it’s spectacular. CBD bar Apollo Inn takes Baker Bleu baguette, smears it with Spain’s spreadable sausage sobrasada and tops it with diced tuna. The spicy, soft Calabrian pork sausage ‘nduja amps up both crisp-skinned dory at Kew’s Centonove and plump prawns at Grill Americano in the city. Etta’s pork and mussel salad shows how it’s done delicately, while at the other end of the spectrum, the porky richness of tonkotsu at Gomi Ramen Shop is boosted with pungent prawn-head oil.

Restaurants show their soft side

It’s time to put the Scandi minimalism years behind us. All those hard surfaces and bright spaces are trumped by softness in all forms: heavy velvet drapes that make us feel like the only ones in the room. Cushy, sound-absorbing carpet underfoot. Gentle lighting. And padded bar stools, a subtle surprise for our backsides that allow us to eat at the bar without feeling like we’re sitting on a park bench. At the risk of sounding like a toilet paper advertisement, softness is luxury.

Half serves (as long as they’re half price)

Generally, receiving half the dish you ordered or a 75ml glass of wine is cause for concern. But it can be a strategic move, a way to try more without spending more. Negotiate with your waiter and you’ll find plenty of restaurants and bars that will happily accommodate a solo diner with half serves, or split a single by-the-glass pour into two. It’s a signifier of the high-flex, low-commitment way we dine today, and one of the rare occasions where doing things by halves pays off.

Hello, bone marrow

The very definition of a “sometimes food”, this wobbly collagen-rich goo brings buttery heft to everything it touches. Saffron-stained risotto at Rocco’s Bologna Discoteca, beef tartare at Il Bacaro, skewers of celeriac at La Pinta and silken mash at Reine & La Rue all benefited from bone marrow’s fatty magic. Serai’s bone boats cradling hunks of lightly cured kangaroo might be the most ridiculously OTT example we ate. If this is what happens when restaurants try to rein in their food costs, we’re all for it.

Pastry chameleons

Hang on. Why is there cannoli on my table when I’m still on my first martini? Look a little closer at that cannoli (or eclair, or choux bun), though, and you’ll see it’s piped with pâté: a new cross-breed of pastry that doesn’t care for labels like “sweet” or “savoury”. Doughnuts at Auterra might burst with confit duck and plum. Pig’s head pies on Ca Com’s evening menu are wrapped in sweet tissue-paper-like taro pastry. And eclairs piped with chicken liver mousse are a mandatory order at Lilac Wine.

Hot molluscs

Bake ’em, smoke ’em, fry ’em up: after a couple of decades on the outer, warm oysters and their bivalvia buddies are so hot right now. Head to Society for deep-fried oysters with a chicken-skin crumb. Scallops au gratin made repeat appearances, perhaps most memorably at Gimlet – the shellfish warm and sweet under a velvety herb-flecked sauce. And Freyja’s smoked mussels might be one of the year’s most spectacular dishes, the meaty molluscs ferried out on still-smoking pine, beech and juniper sprigs.

Things we did not love so much

Tiny wine lists

It’s not 1994. You can’t smoke inside, Friday lunches go for 90 minutes, tops, and few of us are polishing off a whole bottle of wine on the reg. Most of the time we want to drink by the glass, and we’d like more than two whites and two reds to choose from. We’redrinking less, sure, but we’re also more informed and more adventurous, and we’re at a bar to explore different styles. At least throw in a wildcard or two.

And tiny pours

Ever wonder if someone’s been sneaking sips of your wine when your back is turned? You, friend, might be another victim of the 120ml pour. It’s nothing new, but it’s more widespread than ever, seeing a net loss of 30ml from what many would consider a standard wine pour in Australia (not to be confused with a standard drink). Some venues use it to make super-primo drops more accessible, which is fair enough. But when it’s not clearly marked on the wine list – and especially if we’re drinking a run-of-the-mill chardonnay – we can be forgiven for feeling a little bit ripped off.

Tiramisu

Tiramisu is well and truly done. It’s over. Pack it up. Sorry, nonnas everywhere – we know it’s not your fault. But restaurants, please give us literally any other dessert. We get that it’s a killer combo: the rich cream, the coffee kick, the boozy undertones. But we simply cannot stomach one more wodge, slice or jumbo spoonful from a big communal bowl.

Walk-ins aren’t actually all that welcome

A no-bookings policy can be a thing of beauty. Theoretically, it’s equal-opportunity eating – the playing field for seats is evened out. Many places nail it. Plenty don’t. Signs you’re at the latter? You’re forced to hover in the entryway, seatless and on show until a waylaid staff member spots you. There’s no indication of wait time, nowhere nearby to drink the wait away, not even a courtesy text when your turn comes. You might want to think about walking right back out again.

The pushy booking platform

Would you like fries with that? How about a truffle supplement, a $200 bottle of champagne or a piece of jewellery? Reservation platforms are big business and the preemptive upsell is one way they help venues make extra coin. They might also appear to find you a table at that hard-to-book restaurant – but when you look more closely, you may be headed to its less popular sibling instead. Resy, Seven Rooms, Open Table and others also mean many venues no longer list their phone numbers. But what use is a mute reservations platform if we need to get in touch? At least let us send a text.

The winners of The Age Good Food Guide 2024 Awards will be announced on October 30, presented by Vittoria Coffee and Oceania Cruises. The Age Good Food Guide 2024 will be on sale from October 31, featuring more than 450 Victorian venues, from three-hatted destinations to regional wine bars, lively noodle specialists and 30-year-old icons. Venues listed in the Guide are visited anonymously by professional restaurant critics, who review independently. Venues are chosen at our discretion.