The best thing I ate in 2023 was a Kensington Pride mango. I was in rural NSW, it was 38 degrees Celsius, dry enough to make my lips peel like a lizard’s skin, and I was playing Scrabble with my mother. The mango was our snack. Maybe it was dehydration or hunger talking, but this mango was excellent. Like how pistachio ice cream can be more pistachio-y than the nut itself, the flavor seemed like 100 mangoes packed into one. It was extremely joyful, like finding out that your loved one likes you back or seeing your team win a grand final in extra time, but unfortunately much more fleeting.
What’s the best thing you ate in 2023? We asked the same question to Australian chefs, food scientists, sommeliers and food writers, and here’s what they said.
Kylie Kwong: Traditional vegetables and meat served with injera at Gursha Ethiopian, Sydney
For me, what makes a dining experience delicious and fascinating is the opportunity to get to know another culture. I am drawn to multicultural family businesses, where you can literally taste and feel the intergenerational family spirit, respect and kitchen knowledge. With this in mind, the best thing I’ve eaten this year has been from Gursha in Blacktown. The friendly, authentic, homely Ethiopian cuisine of owners Rahel Woldearegay and Yibeltal Tsegaw was for me an explosion of new flavors, spices and aromas, a completely invigorating, unforgettable and culturally immersive experience.
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Kylie Kwong is a restaurateur, TV host and author. She is the owner and chef of Lucky Kwong, a modern Chinese restaurant in Sydney
Adrian Widjy: fish dish at Casa Do Benfica, Sydney
The place is such a hidden place that no one seems to know anything about it. It’s in Marrickville, next to a very dark car park. You will see a building that says Marrickville District Hardcourt Tennis Club and as you walk around that building, past people playing tennis, you will see a Portuguese restaurant called Casa Do Benfica. It has an RSL atmosphere, it’s very modest. The best thing I’ve eaten is their huge seafood platter. It has so many things: fish, squid, mussels, everything. The taste is lemony and savory – just like the taste of Portugal. It’s really good. The fact that I only discovered it this year is shocking.
Sofia Levin: Adana kebab from Kömür, Melbourne
In the northern suburbs of Melbourne there is a kebab shop called Katik Turkish Take Away. Everyone says they go there for the best Adana kebab in Melbourne, but the famous owner hasn’t been involved for a number of years. His son, Emir, has taken his father’s recipes and set up a smaller shop, Kömür, and it is so good. Everything is cooked over charcoal and the meat is nice and juicy. And like everyone else in their mid-to-late 30s in Melbourne, Emir went through a burger phase and now he’s making smashed burgers. He uses the same mix for the Adana kebab, 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 when he traveled here.
Paul Lee: congee
The best thing I ate this year was a simple bowl of congee. It started when my friend Adesti made it in our shop with extra bells and whistles. Then my friend Steve had a breakfast congee with an unashamed amount of flavor on his menu at Sleepys in Melbourne. And finally, my partner Irenne, also a chef, made her version for me, also packed with flavor. I grew up eating congee only when I was sick and soy sauce was the only seasoning. These congees helped reframe my perspective on 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 an 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 would make fruit tartlets as a snack for her grandchildren. She cooked summer fruit, made a stew, placed it on a large tray and let it dry in the sun until it had a leathery texture. In my language it is lavashak. Before my grandmother put the stew on the tray to dry, I stole a few. 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 for me that’s quite rare. Usually there is one of two dishes that I am not sure about, or the taste is not suitable 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 loin with camel lardo and a fermented piece of rhubarb that you squeeze over it. Even the pre-dessert was a native leaf folded over a lime granita. It was really interesting food and a really refreshing dining experience in Australia.
Junda Khoo: stewed 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 fantastic, as Cantonese as you can get. We went after the service and started with the stewed abalone, 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 becomes soft, juicy and tender. In Malaysia it was very rare; you could only get it in really fancy Chinese restaurants. Hun Loong [the chef and owner at Amah by Ho Jiak] and I hadn’t seen that style of dried seafood in Sydney before. Eating it in Lakemba amazed us – we felt like kings.
Adam Byrne: lasagna made with native ingredients
My favorite meal of the year was cooked by Chris [Andrew] from Black Duck Foods, a brother of mine. We had three nights at the farm learning from Chris and some of the elders in the area. He is incredible, he can fix a tractor, he knows how to burn culturally and he can make a lasagna, and that’s exactly what he cooked: a lasagna, but made with only indigenous products. He made the sauce from red quandong, kangaroo and forest tomato; I think the native grains were Mitchell grass, kangaroo grass and wattle seed; and then there was a cheese he got locally. It was different, but it tasted like lasagna. It was beautiful.
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Adam Byrne is co-owner of Bush to Bowl, an Aboriginal-owned childcare, education and landscaping social enterprise
Renee Buckingham: Give 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 boyfriend booked here. It was a euphoric experience. Not only the food, but also the space, the service, the wine, it was perfect. They catered to every dietary requirement and every element of every dish was so thought out and made with so much love. If you think carrots taste sad, I had the sexiest carrot dish I’ve ever had. They roast it slowly and sprinkle it with these tahini spices. It was melt in the mouth. None of the overcooked, honey-roasted carrot vibes we all had as kids. I spent the entire meal thinking, is this a cult? Everyone was so friendly and passionate about what they do.
Arthur Tong: munggo
My wife prepared this. It is a Filipino dish called munggo, a mung bean soup/stew that is a combination of mung beans, pork, some onion and garlic. It’s quite simple, probably a little more subtle than other well-known Filipino dishes, but it’s something that has brought me a lot of comfort this year. It’s been a very busy and unpredictable year, so coming home to something so wholesome was a bit of stability in a sea of uncertainty.
Top Kijphavee: a home-cooked feast on his wife’s family farm in Mueang, Nakhon Si Thammarat province, Southern Thailand
My mother-in-law and my wife cooked a feast of Southern Thai food during our last visit to Thailand. We ate in the early morning, when there was a light veil of mist around the rubber and palm trees. We ate kanom jeen (rice noodles) with a hot fish curry and a nutty and sweet shrimp curry; stir-fried stink beans with prawns; fried shrimp in a curry and betel leaf batter; khao yum (spicy rice salad with vegetables); and squid double cooked in a sweetened sauce. The cuisine is strongly influenced by Chinese and Indian cuisine: unique, spicy, fresh and quick to make.
Cherry Rainflower: Ilza Japanese Cafe, Melbourne
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I went to Tokyo this year and since then I have been in my Japanese cooking era. I really enjoyed it, but Ilza is by far my favorite meal since I’ve been back to Melbourne.
The restaurant is relatively informal – in a very nice spot, well priced, with good food (I’m not at the stage of my life where I enjoy super fancy dining). The complexity of their udon curry reached places I didn’t know curry could reach, and that was even after eating curries and ramens in Tokyo. It’s accessible, the food is very good and it’s really authentic.
Yuki Hirose: kingfish collar, curry spices and citrus kosho in Aru, Melbourne
As a Japanese, fish collars are not unusual for me. We eat every part of a fish: innards, skin and even eyeballs, nothing goes to waste. Kingfish collars are often featured on local izakaya menus and are usually inexpensive, but I didn’t expect to see one at Aru.
It struck me: any part of a fish can be great, it just depends on how it’s cooked and what it’s cooked with. Normally I would eat with a little soy sauce and maybe a squeeze of lemon, quite plain, but Aru’s spice-based style turned a fish collar into something amazing. The curry spices pair amazingly well with the fatty kingfish, 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 bone marrow in Gueuleton, Paris
I love tasting new things while I travel, and this year I had a standout meal in Paris: a steak tartare with bone marrow prepared in front of my eyes. It was finely chopped steak with pickled red onion, fennel and chives. To that they added bone marrow that had been roasted in the oven. It’s an exceptionally good dinner, and now I’m going to try cooking it at home.
Leif Lundin is research director of the food program at CSIRO