When Broadsheet started in 2009, it was partially in response to a wave of exciting new restaurants opening around the country. Since then, we’ve had the privilege of watching Australia’s dining scene supernova into what it is today – a powerhouse of culinary talent and a leader on the world stage. Thankfully, many of the MVPs are still with us. But there were also those who burned big and bright, making a huge impact in just a few short years.

To celebrate our 15th anniversary, we asked some of Australia’s most respected food journalists – Pat Nourse, Lee Tran Lam, Dani Valent, Max Veenhuyzen, Michael Harden, David Matthews and Alexandra Carlton – to answer a tough question: what are the 15 most influential restaurants of the Broadsheet era? The places that introduced new cuisines and pioneered techniques. The proving grounds for today’s leading culinary lights. The ones with that certain je-ne-sais-quoi that no other restaurant has quite matched.

Each writer submitted their list individually. We cross-referenced them all to arrive at the definitive 15, presented here in alphabetical order, followed by 12 honourable mentions that just missed making the main group.

Even without the flights of imagination, Thi Le would be a chef of note. She could keep digging further than everyone else into the history and nuance of the food of her Vietnamese heritage, putting her own spin on deep cuts and rarities from the region’s cuisines. Or she could double down on the craft approach, sourcing better produce and making things herself, curing her own hams and fermenting her own fish sauce from anchovies caught in Port Phillip Bay. But it’s her signature X factor, those beams of inspiration, that take Anchovy to another realm.

Ten years ago, she put fermented tofu, olive and salted egg on a plate and made it sing. Five years ago you might’ve encountered grilled heirloom zucchini with green chilli and fig leaf oil. Four years ago, she and her partner, Jia-Yen “JY” Lee, turned a pandemic pivot into Ca Com and set a new benchmark for banh mi. Then there was a winning foray into Lao territory under the Jeow banner. Now we’re back to Anchovy again, doing what Le and Lee call Viet Kieu, a Vietnamese identity naturalised in Australia. On the menu, that means fried artichokes with burnt butter and a curry vinaigrette, or dainty little banh khot loaded with pineapple, cucumber and a floss made from fish heads. It’s not quite right to call Anchovy influential when this kind of genius is so hard to replicate. But Le’s combination of inspiration, conviction and hard yards is an inspiration to a generation of upcoming talent. – Pat Nourse

When Helen and David Macorra tapped a then-unknown Ben Shewry to run the Attica kitchen in 2005, the Macorras’ dining room was very much “the little Melbourne restaurant that could”. Two decades later and the pride of Ripponlea is now “the little Melbourne restaurant that did” with Shewry also firmly established as a key player in the global dining scene. Not that we should be surprised by the joint ascent of both Attica and Shewry: the story of one is inextricably linked to that of the other.

Whether Shewry was exploring an obsession with Thai cooking – early Attica creations included “A Monk’s Offering” comprising various traditional Thai dishes – or revisiting his childhood in rural New Zealand (see “Sea Tastes” and “A Simple Dish of Potato Cooked in the Earth It Was Grown”) our man’s MO has always been to cook from real life. The result? Dishes that tick the box for deeply personal as well as deeply delicious. This approach didn’t just touch diners. It also influenced the chefs that passed through the Attica kitchen including Lorcán Kan (Etta), Rosemary Andrews (Mietta), Pete Gunn (Ides) and Zhou Mo (Gaea) – just some of the cooks that have followed Shewry’s lead and dug deep into their own life stories for cooking inspiration. – Max Veenhuyzen

Billy Kwong had several lives. In 2000, the tiny restaurant was launched by two people – Kylie Kwong and the late Bill Granger – who would generate an outsized culinary impact. He left to export Sydney brunch culture worldwide (you can order avo toast and ricotta hotcakes at his signature Bills cafes in Tokyo and Seoul today). Kwong stayed to pioneer a uniquely Australian style of cuisine. The chef thoughtfully reimagined Cantonese food with Indigenous ingredients: adding the tartness of Davidson’s plum to crisp duck, stuffing warrigal greens into well-pleated dumplings and folding saltbush into her version of a shallot pancake.

In 2014, Billy Kwong relocated to a roomier site in Potts Point. Here, the chef would strike Indigenous clapping sticks – sculpted by proud Cudgenburra and Bundjalung man Clarence Slockee – to announce when dishes were ready. Although Billy Kwong closed in 2019, its spirit lived on at Lucky Kwong, the chef’s South Eveleigh canteen. The native bush mint that buzzed in her Australian-Cantonese coleslaw and the Warrigal greens she stir-fried were grown by her friend and collaborator Slockee, just footsteps from the restaurant. Lucky Kwong offered a genuine taste of Gadigal Country, and its name celebrated Kwong’s love for her stillborn son. Although her three-decade run as a restaurateur came to an end when Lucky Kwong shut in June, her legacy endures with the many chefs (O Tama Carey, Mat Lindsay, Jemma Whiteman) she mentored across Sydney. – Lee Tran Lam

Before launching Cafe Paci, Pasi Petanen was head chef at Marque – a Sydney restaurant so highly regarded that Attica’s Ben Shewry still made his 6pm booking there despite being hit by a bus beforehand (Petanen remembers cooking for him that night, bloody injuries and all). After eight years of Marque, Petanen sidestepped fine-dining glitz and opened Cafe Paci, a lo-fi pop-up in a former taqueria, where the space was painted three shades of grey for budget reasons. Imagination, skill and wit were unsparing on his menu, though. There was the photato (a potato-noodle dish riffing on Vietnamese pho), and rye tacos that paid tribute to the site’s history and Petanen’s Finnish roots.

The pop-up became a permanent location in Newtown in 2019. Two signature dishes transferred over: the Finnish rye bread that takes three days to make and encases your fingerprints in its sticky molasses veneer, and the brilliant yoghurt mousse and carrot sorbet presented with cake that hides a payload of melted-down Tyrkisk Peber lollies (this Nordic salted licorice is sold with fiery warning signs to indicate how peppery it is). Who else would team together such unlikely combinations – with such success? Cafe Paci proves indie dining doesn’t need big budgets, just XL-sized ingenuity. – Lee Tran Lam

Restaurateur Chris Lucas has launched 10 restaurants since this one, and always has a perpetual holding pattern of imminent arrivals. Splashy new Lucas restaurants emphasise the success of the Chin Chin business model, but can also obscure the substantial influence of the pink neon-splashed pop-punk Aussie-Thai original. Chin Chin’s embrace of a no-bookings policy, for example, brought a queue perennial enough to be granted landmark status. More importantly, its reputation as a place for primo socialising helped make queuing both acceptable and fashionable.

Teamed with the buzz of finally getting past the front door, this splicing of restaurant and nightclub DNA made Chin Chin as much about entertainment as eating. The neon-lit fit-out, cartoon graphics, playlists from name DJs, resort-style cocktails, food focused on approachability more than authenticity, created a model that proliferated across the country – even if it was heavily based on Melbourne institution Cookie, founded eight years earlier. When this Thai-ish restaurant helmed by Anglo chef Benjamin Cooper opened an outpost in Sydney, the undisputed centre of Thai food in Australia, its instant success proved there was something irresistible about the hybrid model. It endures, too. After more than a decade, the original Chin Chin still excels at showing punters a good time. – Michael Harden

Andrew McConnell restaurants have a history of reimagining and glamourising existing models, be that pub (Builders Arms), butcher (Meatsmith) or big city diner (Gimlet). But it was at Cumulus Inc that the dial was shifted – and the style emulated – most emphatically. When it opened in 2008, Cumulus was a groundbreaking blend of restaurant, cafe and bar. It took the all-day cafe as a leaping-off point and both democratised fine dining and elevated the idea of what casual eating could be.

The all-day menu had sashimi grade tuna teamed with fresh peas, included an oyster menu and Ortiz anchovies by the tin, and centred vegetables as hero ingredients while also serving meticulously sourced animal protein. It represented an exciting mash-up of comfort, luxury and accessibility that was both revolutionary and irresistible. A no-bookings policy added frisson, as did Cumulus’s design from former co-owner Pascale Gomes McNabb, which added edgy glamour and excitement to an industrial space via sculptural light fittings, high-quality leather upholstery, one of Australia’s first kitchen bars, and a sense of buzz that was as palpable at 10.30am as it was at 10.30pm. Cumulus is a beautifully measured hybrid that brought a new kind of sophistication and confidence to Melbourne’s dining culture. – Michael Harden

New Zealanders Dave Verheul and Christian McCabe have made an indelible mark on Australian dining culture by expanding the possibilities of the wine bar genre. It started in 2013 with The Town Mouse in Carlton. A darkly glamorous space, Town Mouse (which closed in 2018) read like a bar but offered a menu of clever, intricate, elevated food and a wine list emphasising labels that leant towards small producer, minimal intervention winemaking. Their second venture, Embla, opened in Melbourne’s CBD in 2015. Its woodfired kitchen, emphasis on wine-friendly dishes that highlighted pickling and fermenting, and even greater commitment to minimal-intervention winemaking created a wine bar template that has since spread across the city.

The food at Embla was deceptively simple, particularly compared to the more complex technique on display at The Town Mouse. There was wood-roasted chicken, chicken-skin crisps and soured cucumbers – elevated crowd-pleasers that masked the finesse and creativity Verheul continues to bring to the table. Embla also included a third partner, Eric Nairoo, a French champion of “natural” wines whose expertise helped popularise and destigmatise the still-new (for Australia) genre of minimal-intervention winemaking. Central to Embla’s success, though, is its relaxed, flavour-focused, non-preachy attitude – the ideal way to convert the dubious. – Michael Harden

Ester definitely wasn’t the first restaurant to run hard at cooking with a woodfired oven (even Ester’s chef Mat Lindsay cites Vulcans in Blackheath as the inspiration), but something about it always just felt different. Maybe it was that back in 2013, the idea of a restaurant with its kind of ambition opening in Chippendale (then right at the beginning of a renewal project) was unheard of. Maybe it was the way the sun coming in the windows on a Sunday afternoon or on a long summer evening caught the ruby and amber wines in the glasses and made them glow.

Or maybe it was the way Lindsay and his team of cooks learnt to read the cues of the oven: choking it to smoke cauliflower, using its raging depths to char prawns in brown butter or burn pavlova, and finding those pockets of residual heat to melt sake butter over oysters. In the decade or so since, Ester has become shorthand for a particular kind of Australian cooking, its influence branching into Poly and so many excellent A.P Bakery sites. Throughout, dishes that balance creaminess and crunch, heft and lightness, length and depth have become renowned signatures. – David Matthews

When Luke Burgess, Katrina Birchmeier and Kirk Richardson opened Garagistes in 2010 there was nothing else like it in Australia. And in pre-Mona Hobart, it was like something that had fallen onto Murray Street from outer space. The look was industrial; the tables were shared; the plates were hand-thrown by Richardson’s dad, Ben; the wine was passionately natural; and the food was resolutely local. Burgess was a pioneer in a style of cooking that involved as much (or more) time in the car driving around cultivating relationships with farmers and fishers, convincing them to grow, catch and kill things to his spec. This dedication to purity of local product was matched by uncompromising craft, whether it was smoking, pickling, curing or fermenting.

The result was dishes that drew together ingredients not commonly seen in the restaurants of the day (sea blite, celtuce, periwinkles, lovage, flathead roe) and put them on the plate in a way that was inventive (raw jack mackerel, young elderberries, rhubarb and miner’s lettuce, say, or caramelised salsify with poached egg, kale, smoked goat’s curd and nettle sauce) with consistently delicious results. By the time it closed, in 2015, it was all degustation, the suggested pairings all sake, so your wild brambles with blueberries, whey caramel, sorrel and sourdough were accompanied by a Pressed Moto from Akishika Shuzo. Garagistes had more in common with what was happening at In de Wulf in country Belgium, or Lyle’s in East London than it did with anything happening anywhere else in Tasmania. Uncompromising to the end, it remains a high-water mark for thinking global while cooking local. – Pat Nourse

Thank you, Paul Aron. If it wasn’t for the foresight and tenacity of the owner of Perth’s Mary Street Bakery empire, designer Joost Bakker wouldn’t have opened Greenhouse in Perth’s CBD in 2010. Like the pop-up of the same name that populated Melbourne’s Fed Square two years earlier, Greenhouse Perth was built entirely out of upcycled materials: think bales of straw for insulation, furniture fashioned out of street signs and gas canisters born again as urinals.

In the kitchen, an ambitious twenty-something Matt Stone matched Bakker’s sustainable thinking tit for tat by getting raw milk delivered in reusable steel kegs, carbonating rainwater and milling flour on-site. These ingredients were the basis for a cosmopolitan all-day dining experience that suggested Greenhouse delivered on both style and substance, and that Stone and Bakker were both names to watch. (They were. The duo worked on various green-thinking food projects across Australia as well as globally.)

“We wanted to convey that we can live in a world that’s sustainable and that’s fulfilling,” Bakker told Broadsheet in 2017. “We wanted to show that the food doesn’t need to be tasteless, boring or hippy. I believe we achieved that goal and showed how exciting food done sustainably can be.” – Max Veenhuyzen

How many ways can we say that Seiobo was influential? First up, there was the perpetually full restaurant that first opened in 2011. AC/DC on the speakers, pork buns on the menu, Ben Greeno in the kitchen and a sweet little period when chef David Chang lived in at Star Casino, mainly to periodically glaze a pork shoulder all throughout service to be served as a final, wild, post-dessert course. But then there was 2015, when Paul Carmichael took charge and, along with Kylie Javier Ashton, began to change things. Drastically.

Tapping his roots in Barbados, then widening the lens to capture the wider Caribbean, Carmichael married a very personal kind of cooking to local ingredients, drawing on the shellfish, fruits and flavours of Australia to create something entirely new. It shouldn’t have felt this way, but the deeper he went, the more he upended the traditions of fine dining, content to present homestyle preparations alongside tweezered project dishes that took months to develop and call them equal. The result was marron sauced in spicy sofrito with coconut bakes, epic seafood towers, coconut rundown for dessert. And let’s not forget the smarts of the drinks service, the floor team and the glorious bar menu for walk-ins. – David Matthews

Not many desserts can claim to be a household name. The Snow Egg, a wildly complicated globe of aerated poached meringue and ice-cream, can. When it appeared on Channel Ten’s Masterchef in 2010, the highest rating TV show of its time, it drew the world’s eyes to the restaurant that invented it: a luxurious waterfront fine diner called Quay, which had been captained by executive chef Peter Gilmore since it opened in 2001. But Quay was – and is – much more than a sugared sphere. It’s a gastronomic world-beater that demonstrates just how good Australian cooking can be, cemented by its nine-time appearance on the World’s 50 Best Restaurants list.

The location helps, of course: those matchless views of the Opera House and Harbour Bridge. A bold renovation in 2018 was also cause for much excitement. But the true brilliance of Quay sits squarely on its hand-shaped plates. Gilmore’s food hits that near-impossible bullseye of impeccable produce (including heirloom or near-forgotten vegetables and fruits, a personal passion he documented in his 2018 book From The Earth), sublime presentation and cerebral flavours that have more depth than the harbour outside. His textural seafood dishes in particular, animated with Asian elements such as kombu and black vinegar, are the definition of upscale Australian cuisine. The Snow Egg may have been retired in 2018, but Quay is still our great golden goose. – Alexandra Carlton

When international chefs ask about the Australian dining scene, one name makes their eyes light up more than any other: Josh Niland. He’s Paddington’s Poseidon, lord of the sea in a land that’s girt by it, the man who upended much about what Australia – and the world – thought they knew about fish: its provenance, preparation and presentation.

When Josh and Julie Niland opened the original Saint Peter in Sydney’s eastern suburbs in 2016, nose-to-tail cooking was already well known. Josh insisted that fin-to-scale was equally versatile, sustainable and delicious. He dry aged and butchered wild-caught mulloway as though it was beef. He swapped out eggs for fish eyeballs to make ice-cream. Today, at Saint Peter’s new home inside the Grand National Hotel, he and head chef Joe Greenwood grind fish bones into noodles and cure swordfish belly into bacon. Nannygai milt – aka semen – is spiced and fried. And even the most sceptical or squeamish diner discovers that it all tastes unfailingly good.

Pre-Saint Peter, Australians already had a longstanding and affectionate relationship with seafood: waterfront fish’n’chips are a weekend tradition, whole flathead and octopus has graced Greek, Lebanese and Italian barbeques for generations, and those raw plates at the much-missed Pier in Rose Bay would go on to launch a thousand kingfish crudos. But Niland started a revolution. – Alexandra Carlton

At a time when vegan food felt worthy, earthy and self-righteous, chef Shannon Martinez turned it into a rock’n’roll rebellion that made even devoted carnivores curious about Spanish meatballs made without meat and smoked salmon crafted from watermelon. The first iteration of Smith & Daughters opened in Melbourne’s Fitzroy in 2014, followed a year later by Smith & Deli, surely the first takeaway store in Australia that had people queuing for bacon-and-egg muffins with no bacon and no egg. Both venues have now moved to swank premises in Collingwood, with the most recent iteration of the restaurant an accessible snack bar with fillet o fish, duck croquettes and bacon-fat-brushed Brussels sprouts (yes, they’re all vegan).

Along the way, Martinez has riled militant vegans who can’t reconcile the fact that she isn’t a committed plant-based eater herself, merely one of the world’s best chefs in creating and crafting it. She’s also been public about her cancer journey, showing extraordinary bravery and resilience through multiple bouts of illness and treatment, while still building a career as restaurateur, author of four books and consultant to venues including Marvel Stadium’s Friends of Fire, a renegade vegan-leaning grill in a red-blooded sports stadium. – Dani Valent

“The Aristologist is more than a restaurant,” wrote long-time Broadsheet contributor Daniela Frangos in her brilliant tribute to the Adelaide Hills restaurant and cellar door. “It was a community builder: a conduit for connections and relationships and memories to form.” It was also a launchpad for some formidable cooking talent. Brianna Smith and Oliver Edwards of Daylesford’s Bar Merenda rose to prominence here, as did Tom Campbell of Thelma and Calum Horn of Longplay Bistro.

It was also a place that reminded us how delicious thoughtfully sourced ingredients could taste, whether they were vegetables grown in the restaurant’s own gardens, wheat from small-scale farmers that was milled into flour on-site, or wild foodstuffs foraged from the local area. It was also a place to sample the handiwork of local winemakers, including owners Jasper Button (Commune of Buttons), Anton Von Klopper (Lucy Margaux) and Aaron Fenwick (Whip Wines). But most importantly, it was a place where people had fun. And whether you were there for a long lunch that became dinner or one of the Risty’s fabled parties, your visit was a lot like the wines fuelling the revelry: unfined, unfiltered and pure, uncut Adelaide Hills. – Max Veenhuyzen

“I’m opening a bottle of something strange,” Giorgio De Maria would say. “Who wants a glass?” Along with Love, Tilly Devine and The Wine Library, in 2011 this deeply odd, deeply charming Italian bar was ground-zero for natural wine in Australia. It made a cult figure of De Maria, and it did it all with a serving of roasted olives, creamy borlotti beans, pork ribs and a whole lotta rosemary. – Pat Nourse

This restaurant-slash-wine bar was in so many ways a precursor to so many lookalike venues, but in the mid-2010s ACME was entirely its own. Chef Mitch Orr’s tracks blaring. Drinks as democratic as the service. Snacks (Jatz crackers; baloney sandwiches) that spoke their own language. Plates (that pig’s-head macaroni) channeling Italy and Asia. RIP. – David Matthews

Korean-born chef Jung Eun Chae runs Chae, an eponymous six-seat restaurant in the home she shares with husband Yoora Yoon and black labrador Haru. Their Cockatoo cottage, in the hills east of Melbourne, is also a showcase of slowly developing ferments such as soy sauce and persimmon vinegar. Though deeply anchored in Korean traditions, Chae is also a radical contemporary model for a restaurant: with no staff and extremely limited custom, it’s a heartfelt branding exercise as much as a dining destination. – Dani Valent

When Dainty Sichuan opened its first Melbourne restaurant in 2009, it kickstarted the realisation among non-Chinese diners just how regionally-diverse Chinese cuisine is. Dainty’s chilli-forward food from south-west China changed minds, scorched mouths and won hearts quickly and widely. It spawned an empire that exposed the term “Chinese food” as unhelpfully vague. – Michael Harden

This now-shuttered Newtown restaurant had a stellar second act under Dot Lee and Jarrod Walsh. But Gregory Llewellyn and Naomi Hart’s original – a hi-lo mashup of po’ boys and popcorn shrimp with great produce and wines – had an affable edginess that was new to Sydney in 2012. Pastry chef Andy Bowdy’s blockbuster desserts (remember those upturned soft-serve cones?) were a singular reason to book. – Alexandra Carlton

Junda Khoo has come a long way from exploding eggs in the microwave as a kid in Kuala Lumpur. He began Ho Jiak as a tribute to his Malaysian grandmother, but third-culture experiments such as Asian Caesar salad, roti pizza and youtiao (Chinese crullers) remodelled into churros became signature moves, too. Merging tradition with playful remixing has clearly resonated with diners – as Ho Jiak’s ever-expanding footprint shows. – Lee Tran Lam

“You know who fucks up burgers more than anyone else in the world? Australians,” influential American chef David Chang wrote in a 2015 article titled “My Burger Manifesto”. At the time, we were a tad miffed. In hindsight? Yeah okay, Dave, you were right. All it took was three fine-dining chefs going back to basics in Collingwood – that is, kicking out beetroot, egg, pineapple and friends – to show us the light. Every burger joint since, from Betty’s to Mary’s, owes at least some inspiration to the little chrome-panelled shop. – Nick Connellan

Sean McConnell’s Monster Kitchen and Bar, which opened in 2014 inside the broody and moody Hotel Hotel (now Ovolo Nishi), was the restaurant that made everyone realise Canberra was much more than a school excursion. Has any hotel restaurant served anything as cool as a horseradish-spiked yabby jaffle since? No. They should. – Alexandra Carlton

Moon Park is where Eun Hee An first put her grandmother’s kimchi on a menu. Along with partner Ben Sears, she helped Korean food get overdue recognition in Sydney, even on a DIY budget (their kitchen included two deep-fryers that cost $30 each from Kmart). Nowadays, she runs Melbourne’s Moon Mart (where kimchi jaffles are a star), but Moon Park’s three-year run feels like an important precursor to the establishment of Soul Dining, Sang By Mabasa and other new-wave Korean favourites in Sydney. – Lee Tran Lam

More than anyone before or since, Frank Camorra and his string of MoVida restaurants popularised Spanish dining in Australia. Via tapas, they were instrumental in making building a meal out of a succession of small plates one of the nation’s favourite styles of eating. – Michael Harden

I’ve only eaten at Parwana once, but there’s just something about the tone of the room and the scent of spice in the air that sticks with you. Break naan, share palaw, dahl and sabzi. Not only is a meal here a seriously delicious window into Afghan tradition, each bite also speaks of the Ayubi family history. A reframing of Afghan cuisine in Australia, and a model for small, personal restaurants where food is only part of the story. – David Matthews

Before Jemma Whiteman opened Ante and Mike Eggert led Totti’s to global prominence, they, along with Berri Eggert, were Pinbone. It was the defining Sydney pop-up, roaming in the from Woollahra to Kensington, Hobart to Mascot from 2012 to 2017, dispensing irreverence; good booze; and pumpkin, bacon and maple tarts along the way. Their subsequent adventures might have more permanence, but for that very specific mix of attention where it mattered and goofiness where it didn’t, Pinbone remains unmatched. – Pat Nourse

Melbourne was already known for its laneway restaurants when Soi 38 went one better and opened in a car park in 2015. With unapologetically pungent and spicy street food, the always-busy, often-morphing dining cave was a haven for expats and an introduction to boat noodles and khao soi (curry soup) for many non-Thais. Though now in new premises, the soul of Soi 38 is still renegade. – Dani Valent