Three Blue Ducks up for first major award at tonight’s Good Food Guide awards

When the 500-strong crowd of leading industry figures meets for the 42nd Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide awards at Carriageworks tonight, it will be the first time Three Blue Ducks has been up for a major award.

In fact, the group’s $210 per person farm-to-table Three Blue Ducks Burradoo in the Southern Highlands has been nominated for two awards: Regional Restaurant of the Year and Best New Restaurant of the Year.

The ambitious farmhouse restaurant, located just outside Bowral, opened at Easter within billionaire Annie Cannon-Brookes-backed Burradoo Park, with the former co-head chef of Sydney’s three-hatted Quay, Troy Crisante, at the helm.

Callan Boys, co-editor of the Herald Good Food Guide, reviewed it in September, giving it a score of 16.5 and two hats, making it the highest scoring restaurant of the year at that time.

“With the chef talent involved, I knew it would be good,” says Boys, “but I wasn’t expecting such a cohesive tasting menu of finely tuned dishes. It’s a long way from avocado toast and slow-cooked lamb shoulder.”

While Three Blue Ducks has been important in the evolution of NSW’s dining scene – it helped redefine breakfast cafe food in Sydney and made paddock-to-plate dining a more accessible, everyday concept – it’s never been up for a major Good Food Guide award.

The Three Blue Ducks story began in 2010 at the now-closed Bronte cafe, and has grown across the state, including an elaborate farm venture in Byron Bay and now the restaurant in Bowral.

Part of its success was applying cheffing techniques to casual and cafe food – a concept that is much more common these days – led by two former fine-dining Tetsuya’s chefs, Mark LaBrooy (who is no longer involved) and Darren Robertson.

Along with Regional Restaurant of the Year and New Restaurant of the Year, presented by Aurum Poultry Co., tonight’s ceremony will also feature the announcement of 15 other awards, including T2 Tea Restaurant of the Year, Oceania Cruises Chef of the Year, T2 Tea Cafe of the Year and Oceania Cruises Service Excellence. The coveted Good Food Guide hats will also be announced.

“Since Quay and Oncore closed this is the first time since the 1980s that the Guide has started the reviewing season with only two three-hatted restaurants,” says David Matthews, co-editor of the Guide. “Tonight we get to see whether any other contenders have made the leap.”

The Good Food hat rating system – from one to the pinnacle of three – was created by the Good Food Guide more than 40 years ago to give readers a sense of what to expect in terms of food, service, experience and value for money. It’s been the cornerstone of Good Food’s rating system since.

The main goal of this system, and the reviews in general, isn’t to tell readers whether reviewers like a restaurant. It’s to paint a picture of the experience, so readers can decide whether they might like it, and to explain how it sits within Australia’s dining landscape.

This year’s Guide, presented by Oceania Cruises and T2 Tea, features more than 500 independent reviews of restaurants, bars, pubs, clubs and cafes in regional NSW, Canberra and Sydney across various price points, cuisines, styles and suburbs, making it the largest Guide published to date.

A new signature list will be launched this year: the 100 Essential Restaurants. These are the places that define dining out in NSW and the ACT right now. Diversity of cuisine, menu, geography and price point were considered when curating the list, which includes some hatted venues.

The 100 Essential Restaurants list responds to the changing needs of Australian diners – recommending everything from fine-dining restaurants to food-court favourites – and also reflects how our food scene is evolving.

This collection will be published in a free 56-page liftout in tomorrow’s Herald, and the list will be available in the Good Food app and on the web.

Since launching in 2024, the app is considered the home of the Good Food Guide and is where readers can search the full A-Z list of reviews using map and filtering functionality. The app has more than 3000 reviews and recommendations.

All reviews go live on the app tonight after the conclusion of the ceremony, at about 8pm. The event will also be live blogged from 3pm, so you can follow the action.

The winners of the 42nd Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide Awards will be announced on Monday, October 26, presented by Oceania Cruises and T2 Tea. The awards ceremony will be live-blogged via the Herald 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 Herald on Tuesday, October 27.

The Good Food app is free for premium subscribers of the Sydney Morning Herald and also available as a standalone subscription. You can download the Good Food app here.