The Age Good Food Guide Awards LIVE: All the winners and hats revealed

Let’s catch up on the contenders for one of the Guide’s major awards.

Good Food Guide editor Frank Sweet has dressed on theme, down to his nail art featuring the Good Food chef’s hat, croissant, fried egg, roast chicken, stuffed olives, tomatoes and oysters. Three hats to that!

As editors of The Age Good Food Guide, we double-dinnered on several occasions, most notably a Nigerian-Mexican quinella.

We queued for burgers, we queued for Korean beef soups, we queued for clandestine tacos, and obviously, we queued at bakeries. (Do you even write about food if you don’t queue up for laminated pastries?)

We drove up the Hume, we jumped on light planes, we luxuriated on the V-Line, we caught buses to the deep north in search of Turkish grilled meats. Then, we collapsed in delight.

And what did we see dotting every table in Victoria in 2026? Well, meat. Meat and potatoes. Protein – and a little starch – as far as the eye could see.

Some classics never die, and this year saw steak and chips rebrand to steak frites at hatted restaurants, neighbourhood pubs and everywhere in between.

As for potatoes, we ate them as fat, crunchy pucks – the perfect vessel for anything creamy and salty; chipped and fried in beef tallow for a shattering exterior; and in what was one of the most unexpectedly delicious moves of the year, we ate them mashed, buttered and supercharged with a decadent sauce of crab roe and claw meat at one of tonight’s double-nominees, Little Rose.

You can get your hands on a 56-page Good Food Guide liftout inserted into tomorrow’s The Age newspaper, which includes all the winners plus a curated selection of 100 Essential Restaurants (more on that soon...), the top 10 cafes and top 20 bars, and regional guides. But to explore every new review from A-Z, you’ll need to download the app which is the ongoing home of the Guide.

The 46th edition of The Age Good Food Guide features 500 independent reviews of restaurants, bars, pubs and cafes in Victoria across various price points, cuisines, styles and suburbs.

Good afternoon! My name’s Annabel Smith and I’m here on deck at The Timber Yard in Port Melbourne to help guide you through the Good Food Guide Awards ceremony, presented by Oceania Cruises and T2 Tea. Melbourne’s weather has been predictably unpredictable, but after a grey and drizzly morning, the sun is out just in time.

This year it’s Melbourne’s turn first, with Sydney’s event in a fortnight’s time. After the success of last year’s earlier start, we’re kicking off proceedings with a mid-afternoon party again. As Guide editor Emma Breheny will say in her welcome speech, the hospo crowd are nocturnal dwelling creatures, but they did so well last year that we wanted to drag them all into the daylight again.

Join me as we find out who will be crowned Chef of the Year. Which restaurant claims the title of 2026’s best new opening (you can cast your vote in our poll shortly)? Who will gain a hat? All will be revealed today.

I’ll be with you the whole way, providing updates on all the winners as the ceremony unfolds into the early evening, and our roving reporters Eleanor Campbell, Andrea McGinniss, Emily Holgate, Erina Starkey and CBD columnist Fiona Byrne will be feeding us hot takes and gossip as the 500 guests, a who’s who of Victorian hospitality, swap their chef’s whites and chore jackets for cocktail attire, and begin to arrive. There’s plenty of glitz, glam, spritz and tallow-fried hot chips in store.