2015 Gourmet Traveller Restaurant Awards finalists

New Restaurant of the Year nominee

Brae, Birregurra, Vic

Dan Hunter’s post-Royal Mail foray burst from the box confident, good-looking and ambitious, highlighting the chef’s genius for capturing a sense of his surroundings in flavour, and exciting diners not just with what’s on the plate now but with the prospect of what lies ahead.

Photography: Marcel Aucar

New Restaurant of the Year nominee

Ester, Sydney

There have been showier Sydney openings this year, places with bigger budgets, higher concepts. But it’s hard to argue that any restaurant has become a more essential part of the fabric of the city’s dining scene more quickly than this quiet achiever. Its most winning virtue? Perhaps it’s the sense that there are no mere hired guns here, that this isn’t a restaurant-by-committee but a place with soul, staffed by people invested in seeing it succeed. Oh, and the food and drink are pretty good, too.

Photography: Phillip Castleton

New Restaurant of the Year nominee

Orana, Adelaide

When chef Jock Zonfrillo and his team parted ways with Penfolds Magill Estate after a great many months’ preparation and research, things looked grim for fine dining in South Australia. But Zonfrillo took what he learned and opened a great restaurant regardless – a restaurant not short on ambition, and long on talent. The result? Adelaide now has not one just bold destination restaurant of which it can be proud, but two. We count that as a win.

Photography: John Laurie

Sommelier of the Year nominee

Nick Hildebrandt, Bentley, Sydney

Big, wide, deep, long – by whichever dimensions you choose to judge the expanded list at the new incarnation of The Bentley, it’s impressive. But we prefer to go with “smart”. Nick Hildebrandt remains consistently ahead of the curve; he’s always across the latest trends in wine, but never anything like a slave to them. Unlike some odd somms, too, he revels in sharing his treasures, and heads a like-minded team of accomplished wine professionals, making his restaurant’s vinous appeal harder than ever to resist.

Photography: Yianni Aspradakis

Sommelier of the Year nominee

Marc Esteve Mateu, The Press Club, Melbourne

An unforced enthusiasm for both obscure and lauded wines plus a generous whack of charm has Marc Esteve Mateu ideally honed for negotiating The Press Club’s potentially daunting 50-page list. Guiding and listening (rather than leading and lecturing) is his thoroughly enjoyable modus operandi.

Photography: Marcel Aucar

Sommelier of the Year nominee

Josh Picken, Orana, Adelaide

At the recently opened Orana, wine director Josh Picken faces a daunting challenge: to pair wines with striking flavours, sparked by radical combinations of native ingredients. Without a proven formula to apply, he does the job admirably by picking subtle and often unexpected drink choices. He’s across a wide range of international wines, diverse varieties and styles, but doesn’t ignore local heroes, young emerging stars or bold experiments. His modest manner and enthusiasm for sharing his discoveries is understated and charming.

Photography: John Laurie

Wine List of the Year nominee

Moon Park, Sydney

Compiling a comprehensive, mouth-watering, cuisine-appropriate and zeitgeisty selection of wines – and beer and cocktails and Korean soju – and making it all fit on one A4 sheet is an extraordinary achievement.

Photography: Scott Hawkins

Wine List of the Year nominee

Orana, Adelaide

Quirkily billed as “The Little Book of Liquids”, this is an exquisite example of a medium-sized wine list that not only ticks all the contemporary boxes but also does so with style and panache.

Photography: John Laurie

Wine List of the Year nominee

Print Hall, Perth

Print Hall exploded onto the scene this time last year with a 100-page list that we described as “outstanding, amazing and confident”. Twelve months on, almost impossibly, the list is even bigger and even better. And, yes, that is Selosse sold by the glass.

Bar of the Year nominee

Bar Americano, Melbourne

A tiny bar that feels quintessentially Melbourne but also like it’s landed, fully formed, from a different (European) place, Bar Americano is precise, focused and stylish. You’d expect no less from owner Matt Bax, one of the bar scene’s true visionaries.

Photography: Alicia Taylor

Bar of the Year nominee

Lefty’s Old Time Music Hall, Brisbane

A true old-style welcoming honky-tonk, Lefty’s has firmly wedged itself in the hearts of Brisbane’s drinkers. Prepare to enter party central, whether you’re quaffing craft beer in the circus of the galleried saloon downstairs, setting sail on an ocean of rum upstairs in the Mermaid Lounge or just grabbing a bottle of hooch at the Liquor Store & Prairie Supplies bottle-o and bar. It’s fun.

Photography: AJ Moller

Bar of the Year nominee

Clever Little Tailor, Adelaide

Watch and learn as bar manager Marshall King makes a cocktail. He lines up the bottles, Tokyo-style, and deftly cracks each ice cube with a spoon before they go into the mixing glass. His work is unhurried, but efficient, smart without being showy. He and his cohorts know their beers as well as they know their cocktails and as well as they know their (fittingly sharp) wine list. Adelaide may have come late to the cocktail bar game, but with the likes of this brilliant little operation leading the charge, it’s more than making up for lost time.

Photography: John Laurie

Regional Restaurant of the Year nominee

Brae, Birregurra

Dan Hunter is no stranger to this award, the Royal Mail Hotel in Dunkeld having taken it out multiple times over the years of his tenure. Now out on his own as owner and chef at Brae, 90 minutes south-west of Melbourne, he’s underlined his affinity with cooking in the country that make his restaurants places of pilgrimage.

Photography: Julian Kingma

Regional Restaurant of the Year nominee

Nu Nu, Palm Cove

Fabulous new beachfront digs and clever, flavourful dishes perfectly pitched to the tropical surrounds? In its 10th birthday year, our former regional restaurant winner for 2008 has taken it to the next level. A fresh benchmark for seductive all-day Australian beachside dining.

Regional Restaurant of the Year nominee

Provenance, Beechworth

North-east Victoria is now on the radar of every self-respecting food lover in the country, thanks to Michael Ryan’s finely crafted restaurant on Beechworth’s leafy main drag. Brilliant service and an equally starry wine list frame Ryan’s elegant, intelligent, exciting plays of Japanese and European flavours and texture.

Maître d’ of the Year nominee

Christian McCabe, The Town Mouse, Melbourne

Just as The Town Mouse brings a dose of sophisticated, dark-hued Kiwi style to Melbourne, so does co-owner Christian McCabe deliver a unique and particular sense of service and hospitality. Urbane, personable and efficient, McCabe personifies the safe pair of hands.

Photography: Marcel Aucar

Maître d’ of the Year nominee

Romeo Lee, Sixpenny, Sydney

If you found yourself wondering today who the great Australian maîtres d’ of tomorrow were going to be, you could certainly start with Romeo Lee. In his work running the floor at Sixpenny, he shows that mixture of warmth and self-possession, wit and reserve that distinguishes our most accomplished restaurant managers. His fellows, chefs and co-owners James Parry and Daniel Puskas keep the floor team on their toes with an ever-changing menu filled with carefully nuanced technique and unusual ingredients, but Lee treats every query and exchange as an opportunity to find a way to make his guests’ visit that little bit more pleasant. One to watch.

Photography: Andrew Finlayson

Maître d’ of the Year nominee

Simon Freeman, Brae, Birregurra

Lucky for Dan Hunter when he decamped from Dunkeld’s Royal Mail Hotel to his own digs in Birregurra in rural Victoria that he convinced Simon Freeman to join him on the adventure. Freeman’s calm, charming and knowledgeable presence has been a major factor in bringing to the fledgling Brae a maturity and confidence way beyond its years. Freeman brings an extensive knowledge of food and wine to the table, having worked at notable establishments including Claude Bosi’s Hibiscus.

Best New Talent nominee

Victor Liong, Lee Ho Fook, Melbourne

Victor Liong’s impressive CV includes time at Marque and Mr Wong, and at Lee Ho Fook, his first gig as head chef, he shows what he’s learned and what he’s capable of – playful, sometimes complex dishes that riff on Chinese cooking, observing the rules but not bound by them.

Photography: Eve Wilson

Best New Talent nominee

Eun Hee An & Ben Sears, Moon Park, Sydney

This pair of talented young cooks have almost dual-handedly put contemporary Korean cooking on the map in Australia. Moon Park is a restaurant that’s grounded in its Redfern setting, and its cooking takes wing as much on the strength of Eun Hee An and Ben Sears’ experience at the likes of Claude’s, Cutler & Co. and Vue de Monde as their shared love of Korean culture.

Photography: John Laurie

Best New Talent nominee

Alex Drobysz, Bar Nacional, Melbourne

Bar Nacional became lodged in the upper branches of Melbourne’s Spanish tree in a remarkably short time thanks to Alex Drobysz’s complete understanding of the genre. Big, well-balanced flavours and cooking that displays confidence and clarity have flagged a chef that’s one to watch.

Photography: Marcel Aucar

Best New Talent nominee

Mike Eggert & Jemma Whiteman, Pinbone, Sydney

Marked as much by humility as irreverence, as obsessed by wine as they are by food, as immersed in the fruits of their local environment as they are by the latest ideas from overseas, Pinboners Jemma Whiteman and Mike Eggert could be the poster-kids of where cooking is at in Sydney circa 2014, and yet their cooking remains personal, unpredictable and richly fulfilling.

Photography: Prue Ruscoe

Best New Talent nominee

Scott Huggins & Emma Jade McCaskill, Magill Estate, Adelaide

With a combined curriculum vitae that takes in such diverse ports of call as St John and Sat Bains in the UK, Tokyo’s RyuGin, and The Royal Mail and Tetsuya’s back home in Australia, Emma McCaskill and Scott Huggins bring a worldly perspective to their work. At the helm of a state-of-the-art kitchen, at a restaurant designed by Pascale Gomes-McNabb in a Glenn Murcutt building on the historic site where Grange Hermitage was born, they’ve been tasked with creating a world-class eatery on the outskirts of Adelaide. We think they’re more than up to the job.

Photography: John Laurie

Best New Talent nominee

Mat Lindsay, Ester, Sydney

Not for Mat Lindsay the toys and trappings of the techno-emotional kitchen. This former Billy Kwong head chef is happiest when the coals are neatly banked and there’s smoke in the air. But, as with the likes of the mighty Etxebarri in Spain, this focus on the magic of the hearth is no surrendering of ambition; quite the opposite, if Ester’s delicious contemporary food is any guide.

Photography: Ben Dearnley