20 new hats, Lake House’s four-decade streak: Good Food Guide drops tonight

When Victoria’s restaurant movers and shakers meet for the 46th Age Good Food Guide awards in Port Melbourne tonight, it will cap a four-decade streak for Daylesford’s Lake House, which has appeared annually in the Guide since it opened.

The two-hatted Daylesford institution was established by Alla and the late Allan Wolf-Tasker in 1984, and has been defining country indulgence since. Emma Breheny, who co-edited this year’s Guide alongside Frank Sweet, says it’s a landmark dining destination.

“Many of today’s best regional restaurants are indebted to what Lake House created all those years ago, establishing a new kind of luxury that’s grounded in place,” says Breheny.

While Lake House is one of Victoria’s long-featured Guide restaurants, 51-year-old Cantonese fine diner Flower Drum (winner of last year’s T2 Tea Restaurant of the Year award) is another.

At the other end of the spectrum there are venues attending their first-ever Good Food Guide awards, such as Carlton’s Bistra. In June, Bistra was awarded one hat and a score of 15 in Good Food’s weekly reviews, and is expected to retain that position when the hats and winners are announced at this afternoon’s Age Good Food Guide launch. This year’s Guide is once again presented by Oceania Cruises and T2 Tea.

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There are 20 newly hatted restaurants this year, which is a big change from 2025.

“That’s up on 12 last year – a huge result for punters, and a richly deserved reward for the mavericks and risk-takers of Victorian dining,” says Sweet.

That is balanced by 11 venues dropping out of the hats list.

The Good Food hat rating system – from one to the pinnacle of three – was created by the Good Food Guide more than 40 years ago to give readers a sense of what to expect in terms of food, service, experience and value for money. It’s been the cornerstone of Good Food’s rating system since.

The main goal of this system, and the reviews in general, isn’t to tell readers whether reviewers like a restaurant. It’s to paint a picture of the experience so readers can decide whether they might like it, and to explain how it sits within Australia’s dining landscape.

Tonight’s chef-studded ceremony begins at 3pm and will be lived blogged via The Age website. Around 500 hospitality industry leaders will be at Timber Yard to see who retains their hat and who might add another, as well who will win 17 awards, including Restaurant of the Year, Chef of the Year, New Restaurant of the Year, Cafe of the Year and Service Excellence.

Ainslie Lubbock, from Pt Leo Estate on the Mornington Peninsula, is in the running for Service Excellence for the second time. She first won the award in 2012 while working at Pei Modern.

“Leading a platoon of service staff, some of whom might be in their first restaurant jobs, across a three-pronged mega-venue on the Mornington Peninsula requires deep reserves of composure,” says Breheny.

This year’s Guide features more than 500 independent reviews of restaurants, bars, pubs and cafes in Victoria and Melbourne across various price points, cuisines, styles and suburbs, making it the largest Age Guide published.

A new signature curated list will be launched this year: the 100 Essential Restaurants. These are the places that define dining out in Victoria right now. Diversity of cuisine, offering, geography and price point were considered when creating the list, including some hatted venues.

The 100 Essential Restaurants list responds to the changing needs of Australian diners – recommending everything from fine-dining restaurants to food-court favourites – and also reflects how our food scene is evolving.

“Hatted or not, an essential restaurant could either drip with chandeliers or be somewhere you leave covered in crumbs and sauce,” Sweet says. “It could be round the corner from your house or it could be a three-hour drive away. Whatever the case, an Ethiopian feast in Footscray is as essential to Victorian dining as France-Soir is to Burgundy nerds. You’ll find both in this list.”

This collection will be published in a free 56-page liftout in tomorrow’s Age, and the list will be available in the Good Food app and on the web.

Since launching in 2024, the app is considered the home of the Good Food Guide and is where readers can search the full A-Z list of reviews using map and filtering functionality. There are more than 3000 reviews and recommendations in the app.

The app also has regional dining round-ups, stretching from the Grampians to Gippsland. They contain tips on where to get everything including a coffee, excellent sausage roll, beer or meal.

All reviews go live on the app tonight after the conclusion of the ceremony, about 8pm. Breheny says the digitised Guide means readers can more easily explore reviews with the bonus of up-to-date opening hours and a location-based “nearby” function to locate recommended restaurants in their area – much like a personalised Google map.

The Good Food app is free for premium subscribers of The Age and also available as a standalone subscription. You can download the Good Food app here.

Sarah Norris – Sarah is Head of Good Food and a former national editor at Broadsheet.