by The best thing I ate in 2023 was a Kensington Pride mango. I was in rural NSW, it was 38C, dry enough that my lips were peeling like lizard skin while playing Scrabble with my mum. The mango was our halftime snack. Maybe it was the dehydration or the hunger talking, but this mango was amazing. Like how pistachio ice cream can be more pistachio-y than the nut itself, the flavor seemed like 100 mangos packed into one. It was very satisfying, like finding out that you like your push back or that your team saw a big final in extra time, but, alas, much easier.
What was the best thing you ate in 2023? We asked Australia’s top chefs, food scientists, sommeliers and food writers the same question, and here’s what they said.
Kylie Kwong: traditional vegetables and meat served with injera at Gursha Ethiopia, Sydney
For me, what makes a food experience delicious and interesting is the opportunity to learn about a different culture. I am drawn to multicultural family-run businesses, where you can taste and feel the intergenerational family spirit, respect and lore of the kitchen. With this in mind, it’s the best thing I’ve eaten this year from Gursha in Ballydubh. The friendly, authentic, home-style cooking of owners Rahel Woldearegay and Yibeltal Tsegaw was an explosion of new flavors, spices and aromas for me, a truly exciting, unforgettable and cultural experience.
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Kylie Kwong is a restaurateur, TV presenter and author. She is the owner and chef of Lucky Kwong, a modern Chinese restaurant in Sydney
Adrian Widjy: seafood platter at Casa Do Benfica, Sydney
The place is such a hidden place, nobody seems to know about it. It’s in Marrickville, next to a dark car park. You will see a building that says Marrickville District Hardcourt Tennis Club and if you walk around that building, past people playing tennis, you will see a Portuguese restaurant called Casa Do Benfica. He’s got an RSL vibe, he’s very humble. The best thing I ate was their huge seafood platter. There are so many things – fish, squid, clam, everything. The taste is lemony and delicious – just like the Portuguese taste. It is very good. It’s surprising that I only discovered it this year.
Sofia Levin: Adana kebab from Kömür, Melbourne
In the northern suburbs of Melbourne there is a kebab place called Katik Turkish Take Away. Everyone says to go there for the best Adana kebab in Melbourne but the famous owner has been out of touch for several years. His son, Emir, has taken his father’s recipes and made a smaller scale shop, Kömür, and it’s just as good. Everything is cooked over charcoal, and the meat is lovely and juicy. Also, like everyone else in his mid to late 30s in Melbourne, Emir went through a burger phase and now makes smashed burgers. He uses the same mixture for the Adana kebabs, but in a burger patty. I took [American food vlogger] Mark Wiens there, and he said it was one of the best things he ate while traveling here.
Paul Lee: Congee
The best thing I ate this year was a simple bowl of congee. It started with my friend Adesti doing it at our shop with extra trimmings. Then my friend Steve had an unapologetically delicious breakfast congee on his menu at Sleepys in Melbourne. And finally, my partner Irenne, also a chef, made me her version, packed full of flavor. I grew up eating congee only when I was sick and soy sauce was the only flavoring. These congees helped reframe my view of how delicious it can be.
Hamed Allahyari: stewed apricots at Avenel Fair Food, Avenel
My friend opened Avenal Fair Food, an organic grocer near Nagambie. When I went to her shop, she was cooking apricot stew. As soon as I had the first spoonful, I thought “this is the best thing I’ve ever had”. It took me back to my childhood, when my grandmother used to make fruit leather as a snack for her grandchildren. She would cook the summer fruit, make a stew, put it on a large tray and leave it in the sun to dry until it took on the texture of leather. In my language it is lavashak. Before my grandmother would put the stew on the tray to dry, I would steal some. It was so delicious.
Paul Farag: set menu at Restaurant Botanic in Adelaide
From start to finish there wasn’t a single course I didn’t like, and that’s rare for me. There’s usually one of two dishes I’m not sure about, or the seasoning is off to my personal palette. There were cherry tomatoes that were blanched, peeled and then pumped with concentrated, fermented tomatoes and cream filling. There was kangaroo loin with camel lardo and a bit of fermented rhubarb that you leave on top. Even the pre-dessert was a native leaf wrapped over a finger lime granita. It was very interesting food and a very novel dining experience in Australia.
Junda Khoo: braised abalone, fish maw and cucumber at New Pioneer Palace, Sydney
New Pioneer Palace is one of those OG Chinese restaurants, but in Lakemba. The food is amazing, as Cantonese as you can get. We went after service and started with the Braised Abán, fish maw and sea cucumber, all dried seafood. In my culture, dried seafood is a delicacy and it takes real skill to hydrate and cook it so that it comes out soft, juicy and tender. Back in Malaysia, it was very rare, you could only find it in really fancy Chinese restaurants. Hun Loong [the chef and owner at Amah by Ho Jiak] and I had never seen that style of dried seafood in Sydney before. Eating it in Lakemba blew our minds – we felt like kings.
Adam Byrne: lasagne made with local ingredients
Chris was my favorite meal of the year [Andrew] from Black Duck Foods, my brother. We spent three nights on the farm learning from Chris and some of the elders of the area. He’s incredible, he can fix a tractor, he knows how to burn it culturally and he can make lasagne, and that’s exactly what he cooked: lasagne but made only from native products. He made the sauce from red cundong, kangaroo and bush tomatoes; I think the native grains were Mitchell’s grass, kangaroo grass and eel seed; and then there was cheese he got locally. It was different but tasted like lasagne. It was lovely.
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Adam Byrne is co-owner of Bush to Bowl, an Aboriginal-owned nursery and landscaping and education social enterprise.
Renee Buckingham: feed me experience at Down the Rabbit Hole Wines, McLaren Vale
I was on a spontaneous girls trip, and we all had different dietary requirements, so my friend booked here. It was a euphoric experience. Not only the food but the space, the service, the wine, it was perfect. They catered for every nutritional need and every aspect of every dish was thoughtfully made and made with so much love. If you think carrots taste sad, this was the sexiest carrot dish I’ve ever had. They roast it slowly and put this tahini seasoning on it. It was melt-in-the-mouth. None of that overcooked honey roasted carrot vibe we all had as kids. Throughout the meal I was thinking, is this a cult? Everyone was so kind and passionate about what they do.
Arthur Tong: munggo
My wife prepared this. It is a Filipino dish called munggo, mung bean soup/stew which is a mixture of mung beans, pork, some onion and garlic. It’s quite simple, probably a bit more subtle than other well-known Filipino dishes, but it’s what brought me a lot of comfort this year. It’s been a very busy and unpredictable year, so coming home to something so wholesome in a sea of uncertainty is a piece of resilience.
Top Kijphavee: a home feast at his wife’s family farm in Mueang, Nakhon Si Thammarat province, South Thailand
My mother in law and my wife made a feast of Southern Thai food on our last visit to Thailand. We ate early in the morning, when there was a light screen of mist around the rubber and palm trees. We ate kanom jeen (rice noodles) with hot fish curry, and nutty and sweet prawn curry; fried stink beans with king prawns; deep fried prawns in curry and betel leaf paste; khao yum (spicy rice salad with vegetables); and double cooked squid in sweetened sauce. The cuisine is heavily influenced by Chinese and Indian cuisine – it is unique, spicy, fresh and quick to make.
Cherry Rainflower: Ilza Japanese cafe, Melbourne
Related: Pissaladière, tortillas and ice cream with fish sauce: chef’s dishes for entertaining at home
I went to Tokyo this year and since then I’ve been into Japanese art. I enjoyed it all, but Ilza is, by far, my favorite meal since coming back to Melbourne.
The restaurant is quite casual – in that it’s a nice sweet spot for a good price, with good food (I’m not at the stage in my life where I enjoy great food). The complexity of their curry reached places I didn’t know curry could reach, and had even eaten curry and reminiscence in Tokyo. It’s accessible, the food is very good and it’s really authentic.
Yuki Hirose: kingfish collar, curry spice and kosho citrus at Aru, Melbourne
As a Japanese person, fish collars are not unusual for me. We eat every part of a fish – guts, skin and even eyeballs, nothing is wasted. Kingfisher collar is often on the local izakaya menus and usually cheap, but I didn’t expect to see one at Aru.
It hit me – any part of fish can be great, it just depends on how it’s cooked and what it’s cooked with. Normally I would eat it with a bit of soy sauce and maybe a squeeze of lemon, simple enough, but Aru’s style of spices turned fish collar into something amazing. The curry spice matches the oily kingfish wonderfully, and the kosho kicks in at the end.
Yuki Hirose is a master sommelier working at Lucas Restaurants in Melbourne
Leif Lundin: beef tartare with marrow at Gueuleton, Paris
I like to taste new things when I travel, and this year in Paris I had a wonderful meal: steak tartar prepared in front of me with marrow. It was finely cut steak with pickled red onion, fennel and chives. To that, they added bone marrow that had been roasted in the oven. It was a very good dinner, and now I’m going to try to cook it at home.
Leif Lundin is the research director of the food program at CSIRO
