Sydney the hottest spot for best new restaurant openings
In ourfifth annual roundup of the nation’s hottest restaurants, NSW backs up its dominance with a further 18 listings.
On a heat map for Australian dining right now, Sydney is glowing.
The city remains the nation’s epicentre of hot restaurant openings, a situation that has held sway for two years, at least, and looks set to continue.
Sydney — and NSW generally — dominate The Weekend Australian’s annual Hot 50 restaurant list for 2016: The Bridge Room won Hottest Restaurant, Hubert the Hottest New Restaurant, Clayton Wells from Automata took out Hottest Chef and Sepia claimed Hottest Dish. And the sheer number of imminent projects suggest little change to the city’s stranglehold on dining innovation.
In The Weekend Australian’s fifth annual roundup of our hottest restaurants, NSW backs up its dominance with a further 18 listings in this year’s B List of the 50 restaurants we consider the second tier of must-do dining experiences across the nation.
Unsurprisingly, Melbourne and Victoria are the next strongest performers.
What’s a hot restaurant? One that excels in two categories: food and enjoyment. These are the places that are must-visits for anyone interested in food and eating out in Australia today. Hot 50 is a list for people who are passionate about restaurants, who are tapped into the dining Zeitgeist and hungry for intelligence on the subject.
Hot 50 is our list. Like it or leave it, the list reflects the preferences and experience of two well-fed individuals and a very tight group of contributors: unlike many of the lists that appear this time of year, Hot 50 is not a gong-by-committee project.
You might notice some significant omissions on our list. The fact is, we don’t much care for places that are more about social media fame than food and hospitality, and we note an increasing tendency of certain restaurant personnel to confuse customers’ wants and needs with their own egos. Restaurants that focus-group among their peers don’t get much of a look-in here.
Inevitably, trends emerge in a survey such as this.
● For whatever reason, demand for exceptional regional dining remains powerful; 2016 sees the highest number ever of non-capital restaurants, 12, ranging from remote rural idylls to Australia’s best Japanese restaurant in the coastal haven Noosa.
● If Hot 50 is any guide, we are moving to a post-celebrity chef era. It’s about time. At the sharpest end of dining in Sydney, it’s all about holistic experience; great food (and wine) is a given. The higher the chefs’ media profile, it seems, the less likely they are to have restaurants on our A-list.
● Of course there have been casualties at the high end of the restaurant industry this year. So what’s new? Expensive — but unique — restaurants continue to thrive in an environment not dissimilar to the notion of barefoot chic, or high-end glamping. Relaxed, but focused. The booked-out season of Noma at Barangaroo, at a minimum $1200 a double was evidence of that.
● The drink-dining era is here; the notion of going out for cocktails and wine, with (terrific) food as an afterthought, at venues designed around exactly this kind of customer, has never been stronger.
