Good Food Guide Awards 2026 as it happened: Full list of winners, hats revealed

Thanks for following our live coverage of the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide Awards.

Read all about the ceremony in our news story here, peruse the full list of hats and find out more about all the major award winners.

And don’t forget to download our Good Food app to explore all 600 Good Food Guide reviews (as Good Food’s Sarah Norris said in her welcome speech, it’s like having a Good Food Guide editor in your pocket).

Come back tomorrow morning for the low-down on which restaurants gained or lost their hats.

I’m off to fetch myself a mini martini and a sope.

And let’s do it all again on Monday, October 27 in Melbourne for The Age Good Food Guide Awards. See you there!

From one hat to three, here’s the essential list of every hat-winning restaurant from the SMH Good Food Guide 2026.

Download the Good Foood app and find every review from the 2026 Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide edition, complete with hats, maps and much more. You can make your own saved list of Good Food Guide venues, too.

Premium Digital subscribers can download the Good Food app from the Apple App Store or the Google Play Store now.

Ecca Zhang, Grape Garden: “The taramasalata from Olympic Meats…it’s ethereal, you definitely should get it even if it’s a special, ask them to make it for you”

Josh Niland, Saint Peter: “Last week I was at 20 Chapel with Corey Costelloe (ex-Rockpool) and a former chef of Saint Peter, and we just had the best time, I was able to take all four kids and my wife Julie, and we had the best night. I can’t wait to go back”

Chloe Sharp, The Palomar: “My favourite thing in Sydney has been the pretzel with the smoked cod roe at 10 William Street”

It seems they have a thing for whipped cod roe.

“This is my 24th year at Quay. It really doesn’t feel that long. I still love it as much as the very first day I started there,” says chef Peter Gilmore, while accepting the Rocks fine diner’s three-hat certificate.

Interested to know where Gilmore dines on his days off? He dished for our column The Dish.

Congratulations to all the winners! Read more about them all here

• T2 Tea Restaurant of the Year Corner 75, Randwick
• New Restaurant of the Year, presented by Aurum Poultry Eleven Barrack, Sydney CBD
• Regional Restaurant of the Year EXP. Restaurant, Hunter Valley
• Oceania Cruises Chef of the Year Lauren Eldridge, Paisano & Daughters
• Legend Award Kumar Mahadevan, Abhi’s Indian Restaurant
• Bill Granger Trailblazer Award Sharon Winsor, Indigiearth
• Cultural Change Champion Sorry Not Sorry
• Food for Good Award Addison Road Community Organisation
• Young Chef of the Year, presented by Smeg Jen Kwok Lee, Infinity by Mark Best
• Oceania Cruises Service Excellence Award Ecca Zhang, TBC by Grape Garden
• NEW AWARD Pub of the Year The Dry Dock, Balmain
• Bar of the Year, presented by SevenRooms Silver’s Motel, Enmore
• Drinks List of the Year The Wine Bar at The International
• Sommelier of the Year Amanda Yallop, Fink
• Critics’ Pick of the Year Ama, Surry Hills
• Cafe of the Year Yum Yum Bakery, Guildford

“This feels pretty wild. It’s been an amazing seven months, we feel honoured to be the new custodians of Corner 75.

“For our whole team, they’ve worked so hard, it’s been a wild ride and we’re very grateful to them.”

Sydney is a city starved of institutions, where restaurants more readily shut up shop than change hands. In committing to the restoration of a 40-year-old Hungarian-Australian icon, the Corner 75 team have recognised the intangible things that restaurants bring to the table, pulled them off the walls, cleaned them up, then put them back in a way that’s still recognisable but also entirely new.

Jean-Paul El Tom and Alex Kelly of Baba’s Place (last year’s inaugural Bill Granger Trailblazer recipient) joined forces with Dan Puskas of Stanmore’s three-hatted Sixpenny to refresh the Randwick icon. Regulars keep returning, while newcomers are discovering what they’ve been missing, including puffed-up pork schnitzel and langos flatbread.

Fun fact: Corner 75 chef Carley Scheidegger’s dessert (below) stars on the cover of tomorrow’s newspaper liftout.