In a city as obsessed with good food as Melbourne, it’s no surprise that the annual Age Good Food Guide Awards always generate quite a buzz. On Monday night, 500 of the city’s hospitality luminaries will gather at the Plaza Ballroom for the launch of the 2025 edition of the Good Food Guide and to celebrate our new Good Food app – more on that later.

Before the winners – and losers – of the all-important chef’s hats and awards are announced in three days’ time, we thought you might like to hear directly from the people behind the Guide about how it all comes together and how they decide who makes the cut and who doesn’t. Our head of Good Food Sarah Norris and Guide co-editors Emma Breheny and Ellen Fraser have taken some time out of a frantic week leading up to the big night to answer a few questions.

What sort of planning goes into pulling off an event like the Good Food Guide Awards?

Ellen: It’s a mammoth project. Months out from the event we begin the search for venues, though this year none could top the old-school glamour of the Plaza Ballroom. We pull together an invitation list of 500 of the industry’s best, including all the hat winners, award winners, finalists and a few other guests. There’s a slightly unnerving phase selecting dishes to be served to a room of chefs and restaurateurs. But mostly the Good Food events team runs the show, designing the space, curating the entertainment and ensuring the whole operation runs smoothly.

How many restaurants are included in this year’s Guide?

Emma: More than 500 venues made it in this year, covering 60-plus cuisines at more price points than ever before. There are fine dining restaurants, low-key ramen joints, cocktail bars, sunny cafes and pubs with exceptional food. Last year’s Guide included 450 venues, the year before it was just under 400.

People are always keen to know who has lost a hat or gained one. Will there be any surprises this year?

Ellen: There are always a few. Some of the most exciting new hats are by owner-operators with a singular vision, forging their own path. Others are simply a pure distillation of their category. Hat losses are usually due to food slipping in quality or feeling out of step with diners’ expectations today, venues not offering value for money, or a chef or ownership change. A few venues that scored highly in their opening months haven’t maintained standards over time.

Emma: It’s never easy to make these decisions, but ultimately our commitment is to the diner. For many people, eating at a hatted restaurant is a rare treat reserved for special occasions. It’s our job to recommend memorable experiences that are worth our readers’ time and money, regardless of dining style and price.

What else can people expect from this year’s Guide?

Ellen: The Critics’ Picks are back, and this year we’ve got 150 of them. These are places our critics love regardless of their score. We included the Critics’ Pick tick for the first time last year and we continue to hunt out venues that bring something special to our dining scene, from decades-old noodle spots to places that specialise in one dish to the point of obsession.

Emma: We’ve also introduced the new Cultural Change Champion Award that celebrates those making hospitality a better place to work. The inaugural Young Service Talent Award lifts up the front-of-house professionals on the path to greatness while honouring the late Katie McCormack, a hospitality powerhouse who co-founded Lagotto and Congress. And we’ve introduced Pub of the Year, celebrating the pubs that are so critical to Melbourne’s drinking and dining scene, many of which are in the hands of an exciting new generation of publicans.

When do you start planning the Guide?

Ellen: We kick off each new year with a longlist of hundreds of venues under consideration – those we think are the most exciting and essential places to eat and drink right now. Then our 45 reviewers head out across the state to eat, drink, and score each venue out of 20. Over several months those reviews come in, and in the final few months restaurants are revisited, scores confirmed and award winners decided by our senior panel.

How do you choose which places to visit for possible inclusion?

Emma: We re-review any restaurant that scored 14.5 or more in the previous edition to see if it’s up to scratch for this year’s Guide. New venues can come from lots of different places. Our reviewers and readers may recommend a place to us, we may have seen a venue online and thought it looked exciting, or it may have proven talent at the helm. Regardless, we always go in unannounced and pay our own way to ensure we’re assessing the venue independently.

How do you ensure there’s a balance between inner city, suburban and regional venues, as well as different cuisines and price points?

Ellen: That’s really important. The Guide is a snapshot of the best eating and drinking in our state right now, which can be found in many guises. There are big-ticket city restaurants where desserts are flambeed tableside, and destination diners worthy of a special occasion. But there are also places for a quick bowl of boat noodles, top-tier kebab stands and there’s a whole new section dedicated to excellent snacks, many costing less than $10.

How many places does the team review to whittle down to the final 500?

Emma: This year we visited nearly 100 venues on top of the 500 that made the cut. There are many reasons why a venue doesn’t make it into the Guide, and our reviewers always provide comprehensive notes on why.

What specifically are you looking for to deem a venue worthy of inclusion?

Emma: For a venue to be included it must score a 14.5 or higher in the areas of food, service, setting/experience and value for money. If it scores 14 or less, it needs to satisfy the criteria for a Critics’ Pick tick. This means a venue is: somewhere we would cross town to visit; among the best in its style of cuisine and offering; somewhere we would recommend to friends; and a place that adds something special to the city’s dining culture and conversation.

What sort of qualifications or experience do you need to be a Good Food Guide reviewer?

Ellen: Our team spans many different ages, life experiences and backgrounds. Apart from being professional writers, our reviewers are professional eaters, with years – often decades – of accumulated experience interrogating food and restaurants. But their role, above all, is to represent the dining public.

Do restaurants know a reviewer is coming?

Emma: This is the number one question we’re asked. Our reviewers don’t tell restaurant owners when we’re coming in. We book under a pseudonym, which in the era of online booking systems means also setting up many false email accounts. There have been more than a few forgotten passwords. We don’t get free meals and we don’t get paid by the venues we review. Just as we have done for more than 40 years, reviewers pay their bills like everyone else. While we’re there, we need to take notes, which can sometimes mean many trips to the bathroom to furiously tap thoughts into our phone.

What does it take to get a chef’s hat?

Ellen: Each restaurant reviewed in the Guide is scored out of 20: 10 points for food, five for hospitality, three for setting and experience, and two for value. To receive a hat, a restaurant must score 15 or more. Those scoring 16 or 17 receive two hats, and those between 18 and 20 get three. Those with a score of 14 or below will be included if the reviewer or senior panel awards them a Critics’ Pick tick.

Our reviewers are guided by what the venue is aiming to achieve when determining scores. Not all restaurants that have the same score will look and feel the same. It’s more about whether the venue is succeeding in being the best version of itself.

Who has the final say over who gets or loses a hat?

Emma: These decisions are never taken lightly, and we have a senior panel of reviewers who we bring in to assist in deliberating hats and scores. When there is a significant change in score, we will go back to a restaurant to re-assess it.

How important is a chef’s hat to a restaurant?

Emma: There’s no denying hats bring customers into venues which is why for some, hats are part of their identity and business model. Others are perfectly happy (and busy) without them.

The industry has been plagued by controversy this year with the Swillhouse Group and Ivy scandals, the backlash against Nomad boss Alan Yazbek for displaying a Nazi symbol at a protest, and Attica chef Ben Shewry skewering restaurant critics in his new book. Has any of this changed your approach?

Sarah: These events haven’t changed our commitment to helping people choose, in a sea of options, where to eat. Our main goal is still to be a service to readers, not to chefs, and to provide honest recommendations so diners can make informed decisions about where to visit. With money tighter than ever for most diners, users of the Guide (and now our new app) want to know where they should spend their money, and be able to trust those recommendations.

The Swillhouse and Merivale reporting has put workplace culture in the spotlight, and 2024 feels like a watershed moment for the Australian hospitality industry. This is the moment industry norms are interrogated and reassessed, and where staff wellbeing and an empowering workplace become just as important as the bottom line.

The days after we published those first few stories, I heard people say that any hospo business worth its salt is now assessing their workplace systems and policies. And that can only be a good thing.

We have a role to play as well, which is why we introduced the Cultural Change Champion Award to highlight the great initiatives and programs that are making the hospitality industry a better place to work. There are many, and it’s time for those to be celebrated.

On a positive note, Monday’s night’s party will also celebrate the launch of the new Good Food app. What’s the idea behind it?

Sarah: It’s a really exciting evolution for us that builds on what we did last year when we fully integrated Good Food into The Age. We’ve now taken it the extra step, and the app is about making Good Food more user-friendly, and offering greater utility to people’s lives.

A big part of that is making the Good Food Guide available in interactive digital form for the first time. From Monday, the 500 independent reviews in the 2025 edition will be searchable within the app via a map and a location-based “nearby” function. I think this will be particularly useful if you’re in an unfamiliar part of town and want a suggestion from a trusted source on where to eat. I’ve been saying it’ll be like having a Good Food Guide reviewer on speed dial.

The app also has 10,000 recipes from Australia’s top chefs and recipe creators, plus meal planners and cooking inspiration, as well as a daily feed of restaurant news on places that have just opened. Age readers have been loving our nutrition and healthy eating advice, so we have also got a spot in the app for those.

How can people get the app?

Sarah: It’s available as a standalone subscription and as part of The Age’s Premium Digital packages for subscribers. You can download it from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store for Android.

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