Hottest restaurants that opened their doors to diners in 2015

Some familiar and some new names have opened hot new restaurants around Australia in the past year

Red claw yabbies dish with lemon jam, cultured cream and buckwheat pikelets at the new Bennelong restaurant at the Sydney Opera House. Picture: Toby Zerna

It is a deep, deep well into which gigalitres of optimism are poured each year: the restaurant game. A dream for some, a calculated business decision for others, a disaster waiting to happen for many more. And this year was no different.

If you have the money, the patience to deal with bureaucracy and tradies, and a clean criminal record to apply for a liquor licence, you can open a restaurant. Some do it on those qualifications alone. The restaurants below threw more magic into the mix.

Here, in no order whatsoever, are my nominations for the hottest openings of the past year. Several undoubtedly will make the cut for our annual Hot 50 edition of The Weekend Australian. They’re all places where I’ve eaten, drunk and tried to have a good time.

Have a merry, and a safe, festive season. We’ll be back in the new year, full of optimism.

The Shorehouse, Perth: Quintessential Perth, really. A lovely old beach pavilion licked with relaxed style to create the ultimate shorts/thongs/champagne seaside diner. It represents the accumulated professional wisdom of restaurateur Scott Taylor and the food smarts of his exec chef Ollie Gould. It’s a good team.

Dinner by Heston, Melbourne: Colonial outpost of the posh London original, DbH nevertheless has its own southern hemisphere charm. In fact, I’d rate it more fun than Knightsbridge. The food is not gimmicky, simply delicious and thoughtful. And the service ranks among the nation’s very best. Call it cultural cringe, but I think it took the Brits to come out here and show us what a complete restaurant really is.

Long Chim, Perth: The food is loud. So is the dining room. But that shouldn’t put you off the bunker below Perth’s wondrous State Buildings. This is David Thompson’s Thai street food brand; it’s food to be shared, enjoyed and, occasionally, worried about. Bravo, Thompson, for an uncompromised version of the tucker he loves.

Bennelong, Sydney: Location x 3. Exec chef x 1. Operator x 1. The Opera House Trust made a seriously good decision renting its restaurant to the folks behind Bennelong. And Quay. Etcetera. It meant installing clever Peter Gilmore and a slick management and service team. The liaison created one of the Great Australian Restaurants.

Paper Daisy, Cabarita: Hotel restaurants don’t work? Try again. Halcyon House is an interior designer’s wet dream and the ground floor, almost beach-side restaurant doesn’t play it safe. Ben Devlin is a contemporary food star and his menu surprising and satisfying. A start-up success.

Anchovy, Melbourne: A new voice in Asian-Australian cooking is something to get excited about. Thi Le is it. Anchovy is her small, social and jumpin’ inner-Melbourne restaurant. She does what she likes. We like what she does. Very much.

Firedoor, Sydney: It had the gestation period of a blue whale but was worth the wait. Charcoal. Glowing embers. Smoke. Adjustable grills and wood-burning ovens. And the smarts to harness all this primal energy in concert with first-class produce. Firedoor is that rarest of things, a new kind of restaurant.

Fino Seppeltsfield, Tanunda: For chef David Swain to put his McLaren Vale regional schtick on a trailer and tow it up to the Barossa must have seemed a gamble. He took it in search of a bigger canvas. The classic old Seppeltsfield site was it and the opening of Fino Mark II has produced one of the great regional restaurants of Australia.

Oggi, Adelaide: Amazing what can be done with plaster, timber, stone and paint: you’d swear you were in Rome. Simon Kardachi invested a lot of money and restaurateur skill in getting his Italian right, but it’s the maturity of the food we like most. Familiar, yet going the extra mile.

Minamishima, Melbourne: There is something intriguing about the craft of the serious sushi chef. It’s practised with rare elan at Minamishima, a sleek space that pays tribute to the ceremony of omakase like few others. The primacy of ingredients, the knife and manual skills of the owner-chef … a gastro temple worthy of the title.

Estelle by Scott Pickett, Melbourne: It will take years for chef Pickett to recoup what he spent on his high-end dining room. That’s our gain; it’s a sexy space and, with a bespoke kitchen and serious team behind him, Pickett is turning out a contemporary, technique-laden cuisine that connects with rather than offends anyone over 40.