![Flathead from minimalist Franklin in Hobart, #6 on the AFR Top 100 Restaurants 2017 list.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170620161333/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/v/1/x/k/8/image.related.afrArticleLead.620x350.gw2abn.png/1497944248791.jpg)
![Jill](http://web.archive.org./web/20170620161333im_/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/w/f/d/8/i/image.imgtype.afrAuthorAvatar.120x120.png/1496024739019.png)
There are no rules. That’s the key message from the chefs and restaurateurs of Australia, whose votes have determined the new 2017 ranking of the Financial Review Australia's Top 100 Restaurants.
The number one restaurant in Australia, for instance, is 130 kilometres from the nearest capital city, serves food on plates made of clay taken from the banks of its own dam, and is famous for a dessert featuring a gnarly, crisp tunnel formed from the skin of a parsnip.
Congratulations to Brae, a fiercely regional restaurant in the Victorian Otways, and to its chef and owner Dan Hunter, who also took out Australia’s Top Chef award.
Restaurant number two, Attica in Melbourne, sees chef Ben Shewry taking you for a walk up the garden path to pick your own tulips for dessert. And restaurant number three is not fine-diner Quay, sky-high Vue de Monde, or Japanese-inflected Sepia, which will be moving to Melbourne in 2018. Instead, it’s casual little Ester in the Sydney suburb of Chippendale, where Mat Lindsay pulls warm oysters, crusty bread and charred cauliflowers from his beloved wood-fired oven.
![Murray Cod, trout, eel, yabbies, watercress, wild fennel from Lake House, Daylesford.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170620161333/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/r/b/q/u/u/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1497829025310.jpg)
The new rankings prove what we have suspected for some time: that the edges are blurring between restaurants and bars, pop-ups and permanents, as both industry and audience redefine the dining scene for a new age and a new clientele.
No longer does a celebratory night out mean European food arranged by tweezers on porcelain plates in a glamorous central city setting. Instead, it’s more likely to be ethnically intriguing food arranged by hand in earthenware bowls in a moodily lit inner-urban setting.
Two of this year’s new entries are from young Turkish-Australian chefs who have turned their professional kitchen skills towards the cooking of their grandmothers, at Melbourne’s Tulum and Sydney’s Stanbuli. (Korean cuisine, on the other hand, has dropped off the radar.)
New entries include a free-wheeling breakfast-to-lunch café, in Melbourne’s charming garden-to-plate Pope Joan, and a vast bakery/restaurant in a heritage-listed Fremantle warehouse, Bread In Common. Opened in 2013 by entrepreneur Nic Trimboli and baker Gotthard Bauer with a no-bookings policy, long communal tables, casual lunches and relaxed dinners, it’s a welcome addition to a list of the country’s finest.
Like most of the restaurants on the top 100 list, it’s bubbling with life and energy, humour and individuality. If there is a rule for the chefs of today, it is to do what you believe in, and do it well. The people will come.
![Paperbark cod from Cabarita's Paper Daisy.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170620161333/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/t/5/x/3/u/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1497829850246.jpg)
1. Good food goes bush
With 14 of the top 100 restaurants found outside our capital cities, who says city diners have all the fun? All three major awards of Top Restaurant, Top Chef and Top Service Team have been won by regional restaurants this year.
Brae’s Dan Hunter took the double-header of Top Restaurant and Top Chef, and a tiny 18-seater called Fleet in northern NSW’s Brunswick Heads won the highest votes for Australia’s Top Service Team for 2017 for its engaging blend of the personal and the professional under owners Josh Lewis and Astrid McCormack. Fleet shot up the list from 46 to 17.
Being forced to source your own suppliers, grow your own food and find your own voice is building a new breed of fiercely regional restaurants across the country. This year’s biggest riser up the ranks is Igni, in the back streets of Geelong, zooming from 93 to 12. To that, you can add Biota Dining in Bowral, Provenance in Beechworth, Lake House in Daylesford, Wasabi in Noosa, Paper Daisy in Cabarita Beach and Nu Nu in far north Queensland’s Palm Cove. There’s plenty to celebrate when you head out of town.
![The chic setting for Fleet at Brunswick Heads.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170620161333/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/l/g/y/t/9/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1497829090633.jpg)
2. Redefining fine dining
Did they jump or were they pushed? Doors were shuttered at the ambitious new Silvereye in Sydney and long-term Perth favourite, Restaurant Amusé, as a general tightening-of-the-belt forced both restaurateurs and diners to re-evaluate the labour-intensive, multi-course degustation menu.
Sydney was hit hard, with Mark Best’s pioneering Marque restaurant closing after 17 years of challenging the culinary status quo, followed by the classical French Guillaume Sydney quietly closing its doors in Paddington. And vale, Eleven Bridge, nee Rockpool (est 1989), which closed in May, to be rebooted by the unstoppable Neil Perry of the newly formed Rockpool Dining Group as Cantonese banquet hall Jade Temple.
Fine dining isn’t dead, but it is definitely reinventing itself, as diners look for the upscale food they love packaged with a buzzy, convivial atmosphere, flexible hours and fewer rules. Note the more modest four-course tasting menus being rolled out at Canberra’s classy Aubergine, Sydney’s Automata, the Hunter Valley’s Muse, and more.
![Slow-cooked and lightly smoked Wagyu beef tri-tip with braised red witlof, pickled eschalots, burnt eggplant purée and a ...](http://web.archive.org./web/20170620161333/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/r/7/d/0/o/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1497829107956.jpg)
3. Let the good times roll
The rankings tell us that dining circa right now is social, sharing and collaborative. The beauty is in the mix, with the top 10 restaurants in Australia including Hobart’s minimalist, produce-driven Franklin, and the fire-powered, good-value Embla and cute little pasta and risotto trattoria Tipo 00 in Melbourne. And Hubert, darling Hubert in Sydney – where the food and wine party runs across two bars, a rollicking dining room and a cabaret stage – is number 10 on the list in its first year of operation.
4. Wine first, food second
Chefs have been driving the hospitality agenda for the past 30 years, but there’s a new voice in town as the young guns of the wine industry muscle in. Bar Liberty, Embla, Marion and Town Mouse in Melbourne all behave as if they are wine bars first, dine bars second; as do 10 William St, Ester, Bar Brosé and Hubert in Sydney.
![Gippsland's Hogget Kitchen.](http://web.archive.org./web/20170620161333/http://www.afr.com/content/dam/images/g/v/k/a/j/y/image.imgtype.afrArticleInline.620x0.png/1497829126061.jpg)
With their established numbers of weekend visitors, wineries have always been able to support destination restaurants with ease – see Hentley Farm (Barossa Valley), Magill Estate (Adelaide Hills), Vasse Felix (Margaret River), Muse Restaurant in the Hunter Valley, and the new Pt Leo Estate on the Mornington Peninsula (See Front, p16).
But now winemakers are opening their own restaurants independent of wineries, such as The Summertown Aristologist in the Adelaide Hills and Hogget Kitchen in Gippsland. It’s as if the “minimal intervention” mantra behind modern winemaking is seeping into the industry, allowing food and wine to be presented simply and directly, without any cheffy fuss or bother.
5. What’s next?
Restaurant home delivery is set to be the next game-changer for the business as UberEATS, Fooderoo and Deliveroo aim to offer more than the usual Thai, burger and noodle takeaway.
The new catchphrase is “delivered dining”, as delivery companies bank on Australians adopting New York residents’ latest custom of handing out menus at their dinner parties, inviting guests to order what they want from premium, award-winning restaurants in the neighbourhood.
But will the Australian public find steamy food in boxes as appealing as the beautifully presented, caringly cooked meals they dress up and go out for? And do hatted restaurateurs really want their diners seeing food couriers coming in to pick up takeaway? So far, top restaurateurs are wary of home delivery for the premium end of the market but nobody is willing to call delivered dining an abhorrent idea designed for people who have little taste and no appreciation of the fine art of dining. Except for me – just then.
The AFR Magazine Culinary issue is out on Friday, June 30 inside The Australian Financial Review.