Zareh wins Gourmet Traveller award, breaking fine-dining dominance

Melbourne's Zareh, an Armenian-Lebanese restaurant that opened just over a year ago, has won Gourmet Traveller's restaurant of the year—a recognition that marks a visible shift in how Australia's most prestigious dining award recognizes excellence. The win breaks a pattern: previous recipients like Saint Peter, Attica, Orana, and Quay have leaned toward European sensibilities and fine-dining formality. Zareh, by contrast, operates in a more relaxed register, drawing its identity from the Armenian, Egyptian, and Lebanese heritage of co-owners Tom Sarafian and Jinane Bou-Assi.

The restaurant's food tells a story of layered cultural geography and local sourcing. Egyptian flatbread arrives with flour milled on the Mornington Peninsula. Kafta nayyah—raw minced lamb—comes from Tasmanian and Victorian producers. Hummus is topped with spanner crab. These are not gestures toward authenticity performed for tourists; they are the actual practice of cooks working from lived tradition and available resources. Sarafian named the restaurant after his paternal grandfather, anchoring the venture in family memory.

When accepting the award at the ceremony in Sydney on Monday night, Sarafian spoke with the hesitation of someone still adjusting to recognition. "I guess it's imposter syndrome because it's not fine dining," he said, "but we may be part of the new sort of scene that handles food just as well … but a bit more casual in their approach." He acknowledged the strength of Arab restaurants already operating across Australia, then reframed Zareh's purpose in historical terms. The restaurant, he explained, was "a love letter from us to Lebanon, who opened their arms and their country to Armenia"—a reference to Lebanon's role in sheltering Armenians after the genocide. The meal itself became an act of cross-cultural gratitude.

The evening's other winners reinforced a consistent theme: Australia's restaurant industry has been built by immigrants, and that fact deserves explicit acknowledgment. Marc Polese, accepting the enduring excellence award on behalf of Beppi's—a seventy-year-old Italian institution in Sydney founded by his parents—spoke directly to the political moment. "There's been a lot of bad words said about immigrants lately in politics," he said, "and I just want to acknowledge those immigrants that have made our industry possible—my dad being one of them." Saavni Krishnan and Aditya Suresh, the best new talent winners from Melbourne's Saadi, described their modern Indian cooking as first-generation migrants working to expand what Australian diners understand Indian food to be. Their current menu includes sundarkala, hand-rolled wheat noodles from Uttarakhand, topped with wild barramundi from the Northern Territory.

Sam Young, named restaurant personality of the year for his front-of-house work at Young's Palace and S'more in Sydney, traced his own arc from kitchen hand earning ten dollars an hour to co-owner and award recipient. "Being in this room is absolutely a privilege," he said. Stephanie Alexander, the chef and author who opened her eponymous Melbourne restaurant in 1976 and founded the Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Foundation, received a standing ovation. At sixty, she reflected on her career's reach: "I love that over my career I have been able to influence a lot of very young people who are now firmly entrenched in this amazing industry." Melbourne's Yiaga was named best new restaurant, and Christian Ryan of Aloft and Restaurant Maria in Hobart was named chef of the year. The awards marked the sixtieth anniversary of Gourmet Traveller magazine itself, which began as the Australian Gourmet Magazine in 1966. What has shifted in six decades is not the magazine's commitment to excellence, but its definition of where excellence lives.