2016 GT Restaurant Guide Awards finalists

Best New Talent nominee

Lennox Hastie, Firedoor, Sydney

Cooking with fire connotes all kinds of rusticity. Step into Firedoor, though, and Lennox Hastie will turn those preconceptions on their heads. As a wielder of the flame, his signatures are precision and subtlety. His highly considered cuisine is light, tight and like nothing anyone else is doing in the country. He has moved the goalposts for how good grilling can be, regardless of whether it’s scary-fresh seafood, ultra-aged steak or plain old greens.

IN SHORT A new kind of delicious born from the oldest of cooking traditions.

Best New Talent nominee

Federico Zanellato, LuMi Dining, Sydney

What a fertile place Federico Zanellato’s imagination must be. As head chef at Ormeggio at The Spit for several years, he led the restaurant to new heights, incorporating the contemporary smarts he honed at the likes of Noma, but without losing that essential connection to Italy along the way. And the menu he writes for his own restaurant, which he opened on the inner harbour in Sydney late last year, keeps pushing the envelope, looking to Asia for inspiration. When he connects Italian tradition with the likes of miso, yuzu and daikon, the result isn’t so much seamless – it’s fireworks of the tastiest kind.

IN SHORT Think global, eat spaghetti alla chitarra.

Best New Talent nominee

Tyson, Blayne & Chayse Bertoncello, O My, Melbourne

The idea of three brothers, all in their twenties, opening a dégustation-only restaurant they renovated themselves on the very outskirts of Melbourne could so easily have gone terribly wrong or, at the very least, made no noise outside of Beaconsfield. But the Bertoncello brothers (Blayne and Tyson in the kitchen, little brother Chayse working the floor and wine list) are the real deal. Their food is original, exciting, engaging and looks good, the attitude generous and hospitable. They even grow a lot of the produce themselves. More, please.

IN SHORT Brothers are doing it for themselves.

New Restaurant of the Year nominee

Franklin, Hobart

The natural, clipped lines of this room are almost analogous to David Moyle’s cooking, if not precisely his slightly wild and untamed person. Cooked in large part in a massive bespoke Scotch oven, Moyle’s food is spare but created with smarts enough to make it focused rather than anything less than generous. Pristine ingredients aren’t obscured by superfluous garnishes, whether it’s the day’s best raw fish with saltbush and horseradish, or wood-roasted abalone with buckwheat congee.

IN SHORT A cool, refreshing southerly.

New Restaurant of the Year nominee

Africola, Adelaide

Emerging from the fervid imaginations of chef Duncan Welgemoed and graphic designer James Brown, Africola is edgy and a little bit mad, transmuting South African culinary inspiration into a pocket of Adelaide bohemia. It works wonderfully, with great peri-peri chicken and boerewors from the grill offset by the delicious likes of raw squid with young coconut, fermented kohlrabi and green mango. Linger, drink great wine and house-brewed beer at the riotously decorated bar all night long, and celebrate.

IN SHORT Taste Africa in 3D – in Adelaide.

New Restaurant of the Year nominee

Firedoor, Sydney

Lennox Hastie is a unique talent (as we’ll see under the Best New Talent category), and as singular as his vision for the food at Firedoor may be, he’s been just as uncompromising with the other aspects of the experience. Backed by The Fink Group (they of Quay and Bennelong fame), Hastie has created a full-service and richly appealing setting for his cuisine – comfortable, elegant and entirely simpático with what’s going on in the kitchen.

IN SHORT Boiler-room de luxe.

Sommelier of the Year nominee

Raffaele Mastrovincenzo, Kappo, Melbourne

You have to be nimble to pair drinks with a constantly changing, seasonally influenced menu like the one at Kappo. Raffaele Mastrovincenzo – compact, dapper, calm – has proven himself a master of the match at Attica and Vue de Monde, but now works with sakes from long-established producers, wines from small, interesting, sometimes benchmark houses from the Old and New Worlds, and adds fun stuff like umeshu into the mix. At Kappo, this savvy Roman shows just how well he understands the art of food and drink matching.

IN SHORT The dexterous Italian.

Sommelier of the Year nominee

Ian Trinkle, Aria Brisbane

Gifted sommeliers have an instinct when it comes to letting things breathe. Ian Trinkle will happily sell you the ’85 Romanée-Conti Grand Echezeaux, but if you get half as excited as he will about the macabeu-grenache blanc match he’ll suggest with your entrée of Moreton Bay bug, jamón and spiced cauliflower, you’ll really make his day. He also presides over an entire section dedicated to Queensland’s Granite Belt. Not bad going for a Philadelphian.

IN SHORT Well-structured and seriously smooth.

Sommelier of the Year nominee

Cassaly Fitzgerald, Appellation, Marananga

Given that she’s been a member of the Appellation team since 2008 and is an Eden Valley native, it might be understating things to say that Cassaly Fitzgerald has a feel for the region. She knows the Barossa’s best intimately, and buys many of the local producers’ small-batch experiments exclusively, presenting them alongside global wine benchmarks in pairings that are as respectful and carefully crafted as Appellation’s dégustations.

IN SHORT Your ideal guide to the deeper Barossa.

Wine List of the Year nominee

Billy Kwong, Sydney

The trend for organic, artisan and natural continues to build on restaurant lists across the country – almost to the point where wines considered radical just a couple of years ago are now seen as positively mainstream. Few lists embrace this trend with as much flair and commitment as the list at Billy Kwong. We particularly applaud the Project Wines – and beers and spirits – selected or produced exclusively for the restaurant.

IN SHORT Beyond the call of duty.

Wine List of the Year nominee

Fleet, Brunswick Heads

Fleet’s list is a great example of so many encouraging restaurant trends: it’s very short (just 27 wines) but exquisitely well-chosen; almost all the wines are available by the glass; the emphasis is on organic, biodynamic, natural and small-scale; the wines are arranged by style rather than grape variety or region; and all have their own articulate, enticing description of provenance, maker and flavour. At Fleet, less is clearly more.

IN SHORT Small but perfectly formed.

Wine List of the Year nominee

Farmhouse Restaurant at Pialligo Estate, Canberra

Over the past few years Pialligo Estate’s reputation has been founded on the award-winning bacon and cured salmon emerging from its smokehouse. Now Canberra residents and visitors are beating a path to the recently opened restaurant’s door, both for the food and the extraordinarily generous wine list. There’s such depth in the list’s four pages (back vintages!), such breadth (regional wines! international wines! classic wines! natural wines! obscure wines! mainstream wines!) and such welcome hospitality (seriously too-good-to-be-true prices!).

IN SHORT Almost too good to be true.

Regional Restaurant of the Year nominee

Brae, Birregurra

Dan Hunter breathes life into the regional-dining platitudes. Not only does he grow and raise much of his own produce while sourcing most the rest from local producers, the way he combines flavours and plates his food seems to sketch the countryside surrounding his renovated farmhouse restaurant. It’s original, pretty and intelligent food, certainly, but it’s also comforting and flavoured robustly enough that you feel you’re eating a meal, rather than a chef’s ego.

IN SHORT Set the GPS and just do it.

Regional Restaurant of the Year nominee

Fleet, Brunswick Heads

Opening a 15-seat restaurant specialising in the far-off-the-beaten-track likes of sweetbread schnitzel sandwiches, grilled cos with black vinegar and white pepper, and artisan-made wines is a bold move anywhere. Opening it, well, far off the beaten track seems like a leap of culinary faith. Whatever the thinking in choosing the small New South Wales coastal town of Brunswick Heads for Fleet, former Loam talents Astrid McCormack and Josh Lewis have created something compelling.

IN SHORT Sun, surf, sweetbreads and syrah.

Regional Restaurant of the Year nominee

Three Blue Ducks, Byron Bay

And speaking of the surf life, for all the jokes that have been made about Grant and Mark LaBrooy, and Darren Robertson moving from Bronte to Byron to deepen their tans, the Three Blue Ducks chefs have stunned restaurant-watchers with the scope and ambition of their new eatery. Eco-ambitious, exciting, and fun for the whole family, the restaurant-store-café-farm-lifestyle cult is a head-turner for all the right reasons, combining idealism and good cooking in healthy measure.

IN SHORT Much more than just Ducks flying north for winter.

Maître d’ of the Year nominee

Randolph Cheung, Minamishima, Melbourne

Randolph Cheung has been one of the notable faces in wine in Melbourne for around 25 years, both at his own restaurants, Asiana and Azalea, and during stints as sommelier at Estelle, Saint Crispin, The Atlantic and Flower Drum. Little surprise, then, that he was snapped up for a role at Minamishima. Better still, for those dining in what is now arguably Australia’s best sushi restaurant, Cheung has now broadened his brief to look after the floor as a whole. His excellent sense of hospitality, and his charm, familiarity and experience make for a smooth and assured experience, and you know you can kick back because everything is already under control.

IN SHORT A steady hand.

Maître d’ of the Year nominee

Cam Fairbairn, Acme, Sydney

One of the hippest restaurants to have opened in Sydney in years, Acme is home to everything – from cutting-edge food to the out-there wine list and bass-thumping soundtrack – that might prompt you to expect the aloof, the too-cool-for-school, and the disingenuous on the floor. Which leaves you utterly unprepared for the startling warmth of Cam Fairbairn’s welcome when you step through the door. Bin all the Gen-Y clichés – team Acme works hard to make sure you have a good time, and no one makes it look more fun than Fairbairn.

IN SHORT Genuinely hospitable hospitality.

Maître d’ of the Year nominee

Vanessa Crichton, Rosetta, Melbourne

Knowing that Vanessa Crichton is general manager of three of Neil Perry’s Melbourne restaurants (Rockpool Bar & Grill, Spice Temple, Rosetta), plus his Perth outpost of Rockpool Bar & Grill makes her unflappable calm, astounding attention to detail and seemingly constant presence on the floor of those restaurants even more remarkable. Being able to flip between steakhouse, regional Chinese and big-ticket Italian without breaking stride is a tribute to Crichton’s years of experience in the trade, certainly, but also to her warmth and innate sense of hospitality.

IN SHORT Making the hard yards look easy.

Bar of the Year nominee

Bar Clarine, Melbourne

The folks behind fried-chicken joint Belle’s Hot Chicken have honed their admiration for natural wine at this chic, compact, self-contained wine bar sitting right next door to the rollicking mothership. A constantly changing, page-long wine list is cleverly put together to challenge any notion that all natural wines are created equal, plumbing the spectrum from the super-funky to the super-refined. Add a kitchen pumping out small, interesting wine-friendly dishes – a textbook tête de porc, wild mushrooms with grits and eggs, mignonette with malted onion and Beaufort cheese – and you have a place that’s both specialised and special.

IN SHORT Good times, naturally.

Bar of the Year nominee

The Gresham, Brisbane

This handsome city-centre bar in the historic 19th-century Queensland National Bank building feels like it has graced Queen Street forever. It’s the only bar in Queensland operating under a heritage licence – which handily allows it to stay open until 3am. Though the drapes are grand, there’s nothing too forced here. The bartending is as relaxed as the cocktails are tight, while the back-bar’s current whisky bent (head bartender Ryan Lane will happily tailor you a flight taking you pretty much anywhere you like) has evolved through demand rather design.

IN SHORT A bar to lift your spirits.

Bar of the Year nominee

This Must Be the Place, Sydney

Taking not one but two of the country’s most distinguished cocktail talents and setting them up in a bar specialising in Spritzes may at first seem like getting Ben Shewry and Peter Gilmore to shutter Attica and Quay to open a salad-sandwich stand. But by crikey Luke Ashton and Charlie Ainsbury make a Spritz to be reckoned with. And should your tastes run to something a bit less light and fizzy, they can instead make you… well, pretty much anything, because they both have a rich understanding of the cocktail canon complemented by a knack for reading their customers’ needs.

IN SHORT This is, in fact, the place.