Winners, losers, and lots of hats
- Best restaurant: Quay
- Best chefs: Porteno's Ben Milgate and Elvis Abrahanowicz
- Best new restaurant: Momofuku Seiobo
- Full list of winners
Some rose, some fell and plenty were rewarded for throwing their hat into the ring in a tough year for restaurants.
In the snakes and ladders world of Sydney dining, 27 restaurants gained chef's hats at The Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide awards last night while 12 restaurants were stripped of their prestigious toques.
The great Italian diner Buon Ricordo leapfrogged the city's other great trattoria, Lucio's, the latter losing one of its two long-held hats and the former gaining one to become a two-hatter.
However, it was a night to celebrate newcomers, who braved proclamations of the death of fine dining and the closure of at least a dozen top Sydney eateries to open restaurants.
A flurry of openings resulted in the highest number of metropolitan new entries in the history of the guide, among them Matt Moran's Chiswick and Star casino newcomers Balla, Black by Ezard and Momofuku Seiobo.
And despite the Restaurant of the Year award going to Quay, Momofuku Seiobo completed the most astronomical rise seen by Good Food Guide editors Terry Durack and Joanna Savill.
The first Momofuku outside New York for the chef David Chang, recently named one of Time magazine's 100 people who most affect our world, shot straight into the three-hat club after it opened last year.
The tiny 30-seat restaurant joins five other three-hatters: est., Marque, Quay, Rockpool on George and Sepia.
''Sydney is full of possibilities,'' Chang said last night. ''It's been a huge year''.
Despite not joining the three-hat club, tattooed rockabilly chefs Ben Milgate and Elvis Abrahanowicz, were named chefs of the year.
The pair, who own Argentinian barbecue restaurant Porteno, put their success down to their co-owner and sommelier Joe Valore.
''If it was just me and Elvis we'd be pulling money out of the till every night and spending it on booze,'' said Milgate.
In previous years, the annual awards night has been the scene of tears, barbs and high-profile demotions - among them the shock move for Tetsuya's from three to two hats in 2010, where it remains this year - but there was ''not a lot of blood on the floor this year'', Savill said.