The best thing I ate in 2023 was Kensington Pride mango. I was in rural NSW, it was 38 degrees, my lips were so dry they were peeling like a lizard’s skin, and I was playing Scrabble with my mother. Mango was our halftime snack. Maybe he was talking about dehydration or starvation, but this mango was amazing. Just as pistachio ice cream can be more pistachio than hazelnut, it was like the taste of 100 mangoes rolled into one. It was extremely enjoyable, like finding out your crush also liked you or seeing your team win the grand final in extra time, but unfortunately it was much more temporary.
What’s the best thing you’ve eaten in 2023? We asked the same question to Australian chefs, food scientists, sommeliers and food writers, and this is what they said.
Kylie Kwong: Traditional vegetables and meats served with injera in Gursha Ethiopia, Sydney
For me, what makes a dining experience delicious and fascinating is the opportunity to get to know a different culture. I am attracted to multicultural family businesses where you can literally taste and feel the intergenerational family spirit, respect and culinary knowledge. With that in mind, the best thing I ate this year came from Gursha in Blacktown. Owners Rahel Woldearegay and Yibeltal Tsegaw’s friendly, authentic, home-style Ethiopian cooking was an explosion of new flavors, spices and aromas for me; a completely exhilarating, unforgettable and culturally interesting experience.
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Kylie Kwong is a restaurateur, television host 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 in Sydney
This place is so secret that no one seems to know about it. Next to a really dark car park in Marrickville. You’ll see a building that says Marrickville District Hardcourt Tennis Club, and if you walk around that building and pass people playing tennis, you’ll see a Portuguese restaurant called Casa Do Benfica. It has an RSL vibe, very unpretentious. The best thing I ate was the huge seafood platter. There are many things in it; fish, squid, scallops, everything. The taste is lemony and delicious; Just like the taste of Portugal. This is really good. It’s surprising that I discovered this just this year.
Sofia Levin: Coal, Adana kebab from Melbourne
There is a kebab shop in Melbourne’s northern suburbs called Katik Turkish Take Away. Everyone says go there for the best Adana kebab in Melbourne, but the famous owner hasn’t been involved for several years. His son Emir took his father’s recipes and built a smaller-scale shop, Kömür, and it was very nice. Everything is cooked over charcoal, the meat is nice and juicy. Also like everyone else in their mid-30s in Melbourne, Emir has gone through a burger phase and now makes smashed burgers. He uses the same mixture in Adana kebabs, but in hamburger meatballs. I bought [American food vlogger] Mark Wiens was there and said it was one of the best things he’s eaten while traveling here.
Paul Lee: bleeding
The best thing I ate this year was a simple bowl of congee. It started with my friend Adesti making it at our store with extra decorations. Then my friend Steve had a breakfast congee at Sleepys in Melbourne, which had no regrets on the menu. And finally, my partner Irenne, who is also a chef, made me her own version, also full of flavour. I grew up eating congee only when I was sick, and soy sauce was the only sweetener. These congees helped realign my view of how delicious they can be.
Hamed Allahyari: Boiled apricots at Avenel Fair Food, Avenel
My friend opened Avenal Fair Food, an organic grocery store near Nagambie. When I went to his shop, he was cooking apricot stew. As soon as I picked up the first spoon I thought “this is the best thing I’ve ever had”. This took me back to my childhood when my grandmother would make fruit leathers as snacks for her grandchildren. He would cook summer fruits, make a stew, put it on a large tray and leave it to dry in the sun until it reached the consistency of leather. Lavashak in my language. I would play a little before my grandmother put the stew on the tray to dry. It was delicious.
Paul Farag: Set menu at Restaurant Botanic in Adelaide
There hasn’t been a single course that I haven’t loved from start to finish, and that’s pretty rare for me. There’s usually one of two dishes that I’m not sure about, or the seasoning isn’t right for my personal palette. There were cherry tomatoes that had been blanched, peeled and then pumped with a concentrated, fermented tomato and cream filling. There was a kangaroo fillet with camel lardo and a piece of fermented rhubarb that you squeezed on top. Even the pre-dessert, a native leaf folded over finger lime granita. It was a really interesting meal and a truly refreshing dining experience in Australia.
Junda Khoo: Fried abalone, fish maw and cucumber at Sydney’s New Pioneer Palace
New Pioneer Palace is one of the OG Chinese restaurants in Lakemba. The food is as wonderful as Cantonese as you can get. After the service, we went and started with fried abalone, fish maw and sea cucumber, all dried seafood. In my culture, dried seafood is a delicacy, and it takes real skill to moisten it and cook it so that it comes out tender, juicy, and tender. It was very rare in Malaysia, you could only find it in really fancy Chinese restaurants. Hun Loong [the chef and owner at Amah by Ho Jiak] and I have never seen this type of dried seafood in Sydney before. The food at Lakemba blew our minds; We felt like kings.
Adam Byrne: Lasagna made with local ingredients
My favorite meal this year was cooked by Chris [Andrew] A bro from Black Duck Foods. We spent three nights at the farm learning from Chris and some of the local elders. He’s incredible, he can fix a tractor, he knows how to burn culturally, and he can make lasagna, and that’s exactly what he cooked: a lasagna, but made only with local products. He made his sauce from red quandong, kangaroo and bush tomatoes; I think the native grains are Mitchell grass, kangaroo grass, and acacia seed; and then there was a cheese he bought locally. It was different but tasted like lasagna. It was beautiful.
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Adam Byrne is co-owner of Bush to Bowl, an Aboriginal nursery, education and landscape social enterprise.
Renee Buckingham: Tell me about my experience at Down the Rabbit Hole Wines in McLaren Vale
I was on a spontaneous girls trip and we all had different dietary requirements, so my friend booked here. It was an exhilarating experience. Not only the food, but also the venue, service and wine were excellent. They catered for every dietary requirement and every element of every meal was given so much thought and made with so much love. If you think carrots taste sad, I just had the sexiest carrot dish I’ve ever had. They fry it slowly and pour this tahini spice on it. It was a taste that melted in your mouth. It doesn’t have the overcooked, honey-roasted carrot vibe we had when we were kids. Throughout the meal I thought: Is this a cult? Everyone was so kind and passionate about what they do.
Arthur Tong: mashallah
My wife prepared this. A Filipino dish called Munggo is a mung bean soup/stew consisting of mung beans, pork, some onion and garlic. It’s pretty simple, probably a little more subtle than other well-known Filipino dishes, but it’s what has given me such comfort this year. It’s been such a busy and unpredictable year, so coming home with something this healthy was a bit of stability in a sea of uncertainty.
Top Kijphavee: A homemade feast at his wife’s family farm in Mueang, Nakhon Si Thammarat province. Southern Thailand
My mother-in-law and my wife prepared a feast of Southern Thai dishes on our last visit to Thailand. We ate early in the morning, when there was a light curtain of fog surrounding the rubber trees and palm trees. We had kanom jeen (rice noodles) with hot fish curry and walnut and sweet shrimp curry; mix fried stink beans with king prawns; deep-fried prawns in curry and betel leaf batter; khao yum (spicy rice salad with vegetables); and twice-cooked squid in sugary sauce. Its cuisine is heavily influenced by Chinese and Indian cuisine; unique, spicy, fresh and quick to make.
Cherry Rain Blossom: Ilza Japanese cafe, Melbourne
Relating to: Pissaladière, tortillas and fish sauce ice cream: chefs’ must-have dishes for entertaining at home
I went to Tokyo this year and have been in the Japanese cuisine era ever since. I really enjoy everything but Ilza has by far been my favorite meal since returning to Melbourne.
The restaurant is relatively casual – well priced, good food, really nice, in a sweet spot (I’m not at the stage of my life where I enjoy super high end food). The complexity of udon curries reached places I didn’t know curry could reach, and this even after eating curry and ramen in Tokyo. It’s accessible, the food is really good and really authentic.
Yuki Hirose: Kingfish collar, curry spice and citrus kosho at Aru, Melbourne
As a Japanese person, fish collars are not unusual for me. We eat every part of a fish; his intestines, his skin, and even his eyeballs; nothing goes to waste. Kingfish collards are often found on local izakaya menus and are generally inexpensive, but I wasn’t expecting to see one at Aru.
It impressed me a lot; Any part of the fish can be magnificent; It just depends on how it is cooked and what it is cooked with. Normally I’d eat it with a little soy sauce and maybe a squeeze of lemon, it was pretty simple but Aru’s spice focused style turned the fish collar into something amazing. The curry spice pairs wonderfully with the oily kingfish, and eventually the kosho comes into play.
Yuki Hirose is a master sommelier working at Lucas Restaurants in Melbourne.
Leif Lundin: Beef tartare with bone marrow in Gueuleton, Paris
I love trying new things when I travel, and this year I had a standout meal in Paris: steak tartare prepared with bone marrow in front of me. It was thin cut steak with pickled red onion, fennel and chives. They also added oven-roasted bone marrow to this. It’s an extremely good dinner and now I’m going to try cooking it at home.
Leif Lundin is director of food program research at CSIRO