Hats On

Sydney Morning Herald

Tuesday September 10, 2002

Anthony Dennis

Our top chefs swapped their kitchen clogs for party shoes at the 2003 Good Food Guide awards.

Look. We're sorry. Sorry we didn't invite you to the biggest event on the Sydney restaurant calendar.

We apologise that you were deprived of the smoked salmon grissini, the baked Pacific oysters with sorrel sauce and something that now sounds stranger than it tasted, trout

roe cigarettes, prepared by three-hat chef Tim Pak Poy.

Last Monday was a well-deserved night off for all the Sydney and NSW chefs, waiters and sommeliers who had been toiling over their tapenades, tuiles and trifles for an entire year.

But, if you're desperate to come next year, we know a way that you can qualify for an invitation. All you have to do is open a restaurant and be awarded one of those items of millinery from The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide.

Simple? Well, no, it's not, even though Janni Kyritsis, soon to leave MG Garage at Surry Hills, did announce on the night that his three hats this year took him to 50 all told.

The Good Food Guide awards are the one night of the year for the NSW restaurant industry to celebrate its excellence and remain the barometer of Sydney and country NSW dining, having staved off a series of pretenders.

This year it was back to the future at The Wharf Restaurant at Walsh Bay, where comedian Jean Kitson was mistress of ceremonies. She was joined on stage by a surprise special guest, captain of the Australian rugby union team and cafe owner, George Gregan.

Many of those in attendance probably didn't know that some of the earliest launches of the book (it's now in its 18th edition) were staged in what is still a superlative space beneath the Harbour Bridge. But all those editions ago they didn't project oversized chef's hats onto the wharf next door either (earlier events were held in daylight hours, for starters).

The secret of the guide's success is that restaurants do not know when they're being reviewed when the book is being compiled, as all visits are strictly anonymous. On the evening of the awards they are not aware how many hats they've won, which adds to the excitement and air of anticipation.

Although the Sydney dining public may be less familiar with the cooking skills of Peter Gilmore, head chef at Quay restaurant, at the reborn Overseas Passenger Terminal, those in attendance at The Wharf Restaurant didn't appear to be. Gilmore's restaurant collected the ultimate Good Food Guide award, Restaurant of the Year, as well as three chef's hats. The other three-chef's hat awards went to Claude's, MG Garage, Rockpool and Tetsuya's.

"It's been a huge year for me," says Gilmore, whose last restaurant was the now closed De Beers at Whale Beach.

"I did come out of left-field. And to win Restaurant of the Year is totally overwhelming. It's going to be absolute pressure now maintaining the three hats. The Good Food Guide awards are everything."

But our favourite moment was not seeing a boy from Ryde scoop the most prestigious prize, it was when Azuma, the Japanese restaurant at Chifley Square, was announced as winner of Best Japanese Restaurant.

The sound of the Azuma team's collective joy would surely have been audible to any nocturnal bridge climbers up on the twinkling coathanger. You just had to be there.