The best thing I ate in 2023 was a Kensington Pride mango. I was in rural NSW, it was 38C, dry enough for my lips to peel like a lizard’s skin and I was playing Scrabble with my mum. The mango was our half-time snack. Maybe it was the dehydration or hunger talking, but this mango was magnificent. Like how pistachio ice-cream can be more pistachio-y than the nut itself, the flavour of 100 mangos seemed packed into one. It was utterly joyous, like finding out your crush likes you back or seeing your team win a grand final in extra time, only, sadly, much more fleeting.
What’s the best thing you ate in 2023? We asked Australian chefs, food scientists, sommeliers and food writers the same question, and this is what they said.
Kylie Kwong: traditional vegetables and meats served with injera at Gursha Ethiopian, Sydney
For me, what makes a food experience delicious and fascinating is the opportunity to learn about a different culture. I am drawn to multicultural family-run businesses, where you can literally taste and sense the intergenerational familial spirit, respect and kitchen lore. With this in mind, the best thing I ate this year is from Gursha in Blacktown. Owners Rahel Woldearegay and Yibeltal Tsegaw’s friendly authentic, home-style Ethiopian cooking was an explosion of new flavours, spices and aromas for me, a completely invigorating, unforgettable and culturally compelling experience.
Kylie Kwong is a restaurateur, television presenter and author. She is the owner and chef at Lucky Kwong, a modern Chinese restaurant in Sydney
Adrian Widjy: seafood platter at Casa Do Benfica, Sydney
The place is such a hidden spot, no one seems to know about it. It’s in Marrickville, next to a really 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. It has an RSL vibe, it’s very humble. The best thing I ate is their massive seafood platter. It has so many things – fish, squid, clam, everything. The flavour is lemony and savoury – just like the taste of Portugal. It’s really good. The fact that I discovered it only this year is shocking.
Adrian Widjonarko is a social media content creator, popular on Instagram and TikTok
Sofia Levin: Adana kebab from Kömür, Melbourne
In the northern suburbs of Melbourne there’s a kebab place called Katik Turkish Take Away. Everyone says to go there for the best Adana kebab in Melbourne but the famous owner hasn’t been involved for several years. His son, Emir, has taken his father’s recipes and done a smaller scale shop, Kömür, and it’s so good. Everything is cooked over charcoal, and the meat is beautiful and juicy. Also, like everyone else in their mid-to-late 30s in Melbourne, Emir went through a burger phase and now he makes smashed burgers. He uses the same mix 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 he was travelling here.
Sofia Levin is a judge on MasterChef Australia and the owner of Melbourne media company Seasoned Traveller
Paul Lee: congee
The best thing I ate this year was a simple bowl of congee. It started with my friend Adesti making it at our shop with extra trimmings. Then my friend Steve had a breakfast congee with an unapologetic amount of flavour on his menu at Sleepys in Melbourne. And finally, my partner Irenne, also a chef, made me her version, also packed full of flavour. I grew up eating congee only when I was sick and soy sauce was the only flavouring. These congees helped re-arrange 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 a stew of apricots. As soon as I had the first spoon, 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 leathers as a snack for her grandchildren. She would cook summer fruits, make a stew, put it on a big tray and leave it under the sun to dry until it took on a leather texture. In my language it’s lavashak. Before my grandmother would put the stew on the tray to dry, I would steal some. It was so delicious.
Hamed Allahyari is a restaurateur, author and the owner of Hamed’s Persian Kitchen, a Melbourne catering company
Paul Farag: set menu at Restaurant Botanic in Adelaide
From start to finish there wasn’t one course I didn’t like, and for me that’s quite rare. Usually there are one of two dishes that I’m unsure of, or the seasoning is off 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 bit of rhubarb that you squeeze over the top of it. Even the pre-dessert that was a native leaf that folded over a finger lime granita. It was really interesting food and a really refreshing dining experience in Australia.
Paul Farag is the executive chef of Aalia and Nour, two award winning restaurants in Sydney
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 fantastic, as Cantonese as you can get. We went after service and started with the braised abalone, fish maw and sea cucumber, all dried seafood. In my culture, dried seafood is a delicacy and it takes real skill to hydrate it and cook it so it comes out soft, juicy and tender. Back in Malaysia, it was very rare, you could only get it at 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 blew our minds – we felt like kings.
Junda Khoo is the owner of Ho Jiak, a trio of Malaysian restaurants in Sydney.
Adam Byrne: lasagne made with native ingredients
My favourite meal for the year was cooked by Chris [Andrew] from Black Duck Foods, a brother of mine. We had three nights on the farm learning from Chris and some of the elders in the area. He is unbelievable, he can fix a tractor, he knows how to culturally burn and he can make a lasagne, and that’s exactly what he cooked: a lasagne but made with only native produce. He made the sauce out of red quandong, kangaroo and bush 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 lasagne. It was beautiful.
Adam Byrne is the co-owner of Bush to Bowl, an Aboriginal-owned nursery and education and landscaping 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 just the food but 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 slow-roast it and drizzle it with this tahini seasoning. It was melt-in-the-mouth. None of this overcooked honey-roasted carrot vibe that we all had as children. All through the meal I was thinking, is this a cult? Everyone was so kind and passionate about what they do.
Renee Buckingham is a food blogger and the owner of Melbourne Vegan Guide and Sydney Vegan Guide
Arthur Tong: munggo
My wife prepared this. It’s a Filipino dish called munggo, a mung bean soup/stew that’s a combination of mung beans, pork, some onion and garlic. It’s pretty simple, probably a bit more subtle than other well-known Filipino dishes, but it’s the thing that has brought me lots of comfort this year. It’s been a very busy and unpredictable year, so coming home to something so wholesome has been a piece of steadiness in a sea of uncertainty.
Arthur Tong is the co-owner of Tea Craft, an online shop and specialty tea supplier
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 cooked a feast of Southern Thai food on our last visit to Thailand. We ate in the early morning, when there was a light screen of fog surrounding the rubber trees and palm trees. We ate kanom jeen (rice noodles) with a hot fish curry, and a nutty and sweet prawn curry; stir fried stink beans with king prawns; deep fried prawns 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 heavily influenced by Chinese and Indian – it’s unique, spicy, fresh and quick to make.
Top Kijphavee is the co-owner of Soi 38, a Thai restaurant in Melbourne
Cherry Rainflower: Ilza Japanese cafe, Melbourne
I went to Tokyo this year and ever since I have been in my Japanese cuisine era. I’ve been really enjoying it all, but Ilza has, by far, been my favourite meal since coming back to Melbourne.
The restaurant is relatively casual – in that really nice sweet spot of well-priced, with good food (I am not at the stage of my life where I enjoy super high-end dining). The complexity of their udon curry reached places that I didn’t know curry could reach, and that was even after eating curries and ramens in Tokyo. It’s accessible, the food is really good and it’s really authentic.
Cherry Rainflower is the co-owner of Fluffy Torpedo, a Melbourne ice-cream shop
Yuki Hirose: kingfish collar, curry spice and citrus kosho at Aru, Melbourne
As a Japanese person, fish collar isn’t unusual to me. We eat every part of a fish – guts, skin and even eyeballs, nothing goes to waste. Kingfish collars are often on the local izakaya menus and they’re usually inexpensive, but I didn’t expect to see one at Aru.
It struck me – any part of a fish can be amazing, it just depends on how it’s cooked and what it’s cooked with. I would normally eat with a bit of soy sauce and maybe a squeeze of lemon, pretty simple, but Aru’s spice-driven style turned a fish collar into something great. The curry spice matches with the oily kingfish amazingly, and the kosho kicks in at the end.
Yuki Hirose is a master sommelier working at Lucas Restaurants in Melbourne
Leif Lundin: beef tartar with bone marrow at Gueuleton, Paris
I like to taste new things while I’m travelling, and this year in Paris I had a standout meal: a steak tartar prepared in front of me with bone 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 an exceptionally good dinner, and now I am going to try cooking it at home.
Leif Lundin is the food program research director at CSIRO
