Meet the finalists for the three biggest awards at The Age Good Food Guide Awards

What does it take to stand out from a noisy and ever-expanding dining pack in 2026? The finalists for The Age Good Food Guide’s three marquee awards – celebrating chefs, service stars and defining restaurants – prove that excellence takes many forms.

Whether it’s taking Chinese and making it French, continuing to raise the bar after 10 or even 66 years of service, or trimming your restaurant in 15,000-plus unique terracotta tiles, these 17 individuals and venues have turned heads this year.

They’re vastly different and that fact speaks volumes for the health of our dining culture in Victoria. All should be on your dining to-do list for the next 12 months.

The winners of all three awards – the Oceania Cruises Service Excellence Award, T2 Tea Restaurant of the Year and Oceania Cruises Chef of the Year – will be announced at the Good Food Guide Awards on Monday, October 12. Follow the Age’s live blog of the event from 3pm for all the action.

Oceania Cruises Service Excellence Award

Executes the highest standard of hospitality relevant to their establishment, from attitude and skill to knowledge and personality.

Ainslie Lubbock, Pt Leo Estate

Leading a platoon of service staff, some of whom might be in their first restaurant jobs, across a three-pronged mega-venue on the Mornington Peninsula requires deep reserves of composure. From crafting leisurely experiences for diners at two-hatted Laura to managing the high-volume and occasionally unpredictable pace at Pt Leo Restaurant and the Wine Terrace, servicing winery hoppers, families, dates and tourists – this is all in a day’s work for Lubbock. That she still finds new ways to create genuine connection with guests, from an amari trolley to tickets for Pt Leo’s sculpture park, is one of her superpowers as a host.

Anthony Scutella, Scopri, Bar Olo

There’s a lovely story about Anthony Scutella doing the rounds in hospitality circles. A regular was dining at Bar Olo, the chic young counterpart to Italian institution Scopri, that opened down the road in 2024. But what they craved more than anything was a plate of pasta they’d come to love from Scopri, the spaghetti vongole. Anthony made it so, sans fuss, personally ferrying the dish down Nicholson Street from one venue to the other with an easy grace. “We have a saying in our venues: ‘Nothing is ever a problem’,” says Scutella. “It’s an opportunity to help, find a solution and go the extra mile.” Or, in this case, 100 metres between venues with a hot plate.

Gabriel, Martin and Vanessa Chan, Shark Fin Inn

Since 1982, this red-fronted building has been greeting and seating diners chasing a taste of Hong Kong. Owner Gabriel Chan, now 66, has been there from the beginning, joined in 1989 by his siblings Martin and Vanessa, who together run an efficient operation powered by hospitality’s first principles. Most requests are met with a “yes”, the venue is open for lunch and dinner every day of the year, and staff (many employed for decades) can intuitively read what diners might need, whether it’s a pair of scissors to portion their dim sum or a takeaway container because you ordered one too many dishes.

Simon Parker, Terrae

The question of good service in the Goldfields tends to lead to Terrae, and then to hospitality gun Simon Parker. Calm and observant, a good reader of room and table, Parker has the knack of the regional restaurant pro who not only makes it easy to access the core experience at this restaurant, but is also happy to dispense local wisdom about tomorrow’s coffee or art outing. “Good service to me is about connection, leading the experience the moment a guest walks through the door and never underestimating what it means for someone to be dining with us,” says Parker. Hear, hear.

Tash Sorensen, Malin

If it happens to be winter when you visit Natasha Sorensen’s French fine diner, set within a Carlton North terrace, she and her team will return your coat at the end of the night warmed from shoulder to hem. It’s partly a quirk of an old building without dedicated coat storage, but it’s also an act built on delight and care. Sorensen is a calm presence on the floor, appearing at just the right moment to place a bag stool down, offer more bread for the remnants of your main course, and suggest another pairing. “Great service is an understudied art, where emotional intelligence meets a deep study of hospitality,” she says.

T2 Tea Restaurant of the Year

A restaurant setting benchmarks for food and service, pushing the hospitality industry forward and supporting Australian producers.

Barragunda Dining

After a drive along crunchy gravel, through tea trees and past greenhouses, Barragunda appears, nestled into Mornington Peninsula dunes. Inside, the timber-rich dining room frames views of coastal plants and vegetable furrows. It’s those beds that supply the dishes you’ll eat, from a trinity of Japanese heirloom pumpkin, pumpkin miso and pepita pangrattato to smoked estate-raised hogget. Each menu is date-stamped as further proof of chef Simone Watts’ commitment to seasonality.

Cote Basque

Equal parts resurrection and new venture, Cote Basque reimagines one of Melbourne’s greatest dining rooms, Becco’s long-time home, into a European grill taking cues from the Basque region. The long, tiered room with its angled windows buzzes day and night with drop-in visitors in the dark timber bar, tables having blow-out meals of wood-grilled meat and seafood, and white-jacketed waiters ferrying sherry and Cosmos to tables.

Roma

Generosity feels like the underpinning of this new city trattoria, from the style of service to the free crusty bread and bittersweet Victorian olive oil to the comforting nature of the food. A celebration of everything Rome eats (offal, bitter greens, artichokes) and appreciates (casual beauty, mannered service), it’s somehow brought something totally original to our city’s array of Italian restaurants, no mean feat given Melbourne lives and breathes Italian food. Everything is considered, everything is designed to delight. No wonder it’s one of the busiest spots in town.

Tomo-An

Six seats, one sitting, and Tomotaka Ishizuka cooking everything himself: this South Melbourne restaurant is formal Japanese dining at its most intimate. The unhurried 13-course kaiseki menu moves with quiet conviction. Tiger puffer fish – rarely seen in Australia – appears twice, first as pearlescent sashimi, then its skin dances in a bracing vinegared salad. Duck breast simmered in a glossy soy-dashi broth scored so finely it melts in the mouth. Rice porridge with spanner crab, truffle and salmon roe is at once soothing and luxurious, and sends you home warm. Tomo-An offers precision, originality and a direct line to Japan.

Yiaga

Vue de Monde executive chef Hugh Allen made history earlier this year, when his debut restaurant Yiaga earned three hats in its first Good Food review, making him the only chef to concurrently lead two three-hat venues. Yiaga puts our country’s cuisine, its craftspeople and its natural beauty on a pedestal, with 12-course menus served by sunny staff in a room of deep oranges and reds. Blackmore wagyu is speckled with green ants, coral trout is enriched by Jerusalem artichoke in winter, mango in summer – and whatever the season, Allen and his team honour it with pride.

Oceania Cruises Chef of the Year

A chef at the forefront of dining, setting new standards, leading by example and contributing positively to their broader community.

Hugh Allen, Yiaga, Vue de Monde

Like the best chefs, Hugh Allen’s genius is his curiosity. Curiosity fashions a fine diner out of a derelict pavilion. It makes dramatic opening statements with lettuce and pairs coconut with caviar. It asks “What would it take to operate two three-hat restaurants simultaneously?” and doesn’t wait for a response. Allen spins his obsession with nature and craft into genuinely disruptive dining. His magnum opus Yiaga was awarded three hats right off the bat, a gift to diners here and around the world. Try balancing that with executive chef duties at Vue de Monde, also triple-crowned. Oh, and a newborn at home.

John Paul Twomey, Bistra

Rather than being a chef showcase, Bistra’s focus has always been the diner’s experience, allowing them to commune with delicious, thoughtful accompaniment. Then, earlier this year, one of Melbourne’s most accomplished culinary names took over the kitchen. An Andrew McConnell and Carlton Wine Room alumnus, John Paul Twomey quickly yielded the restaurant its first Good Food chef’s hat. His moves? Golden rosti and confit albacore tuna jazzed up with black olives and marjoram, and just-set snapper fillet on potatoes – a perfect marble sculpture on a pedestal. “I want to cook my own food,” he told The Age. That’s great news for all and sundry.

Lorcan Kan, Etta

At one of Brunswick East’s suavest dining rooms, Lorcan Kan delves ever deeper into his Chinese-Malaysian heritage, threading sambal through fire-licked beef, coaxing a tom yum-like broth from smoked watermelon, and stuffing bullhorn peppers with prawn mousse. Every menu, every season, he pulls off another flavour slam-dunk. He doesn’t gatekeep his talent, either. For Etta’s laksa special this past winter, Kan had the brilliant idea to roast empty oyster shells to create the alkaline dust needed to make proper laksa noodles. A happy kitchen is also part of his philosophy as a chef. Tick, tick and tick.

Rosheen Kaul, Little Rose

The worry was real: would she ever settle down, give up on pop-up life and open a restaurant of her own? We needn’t have fretted. After leaving Etta in mid-2024, Rosheen Kaul took something like a gap year(s), cooking all over the country, writing a second cookbook, running one-month residency Bistro Marigold last spring and all the while honing her style, now on triumphant display at her debut restaurant in Fitzroy. Chinese and French foundations get equal billing but it’s the fabulous detours she takes, combining chillies and butter, escargots and fermented soybeans, vin jaune and chilli, that show this is a culinary mind that’s only just warming up.

Tom Sarafian, Zareh

Who? Just kidding. Melbourne’s Prince of Hummus needs a new moniker, because his influence on the dining landscape reaches much further than dips – phenomenal as they are. His Collingwood restaurant Zareh is the place you send just about anyone looking to eat the essence of the city, an incredible result for a restaurant specialising in food from the Caucasus and Levant. Armenian funk on the turntable, arak in the martini, toum on the kebabs, meat in the flames: his vision is clear, his execution is singular. Prince of Melbourne?

The winners of the 46th Age Good Food Guide Awards will be announced on Monday, October 12, presented by Oceania Cruises and T2 Tea. The awards ceremony will be live-blogged via The Age from 3pm; the Guide reviews will be available on the Good Food app from 8pm. Pick up a free 56-page Good Food Guide liftout in The Age on Tuesday, October 13.

The home of the Good Food Guide, the app is free for premium subscribers of The Age and also available as a standalone subscription. You can download the Good Food app here.